


Hybrid Utopia

by evenstar8705



Category: Star Trek: Deep Space Nine
Genre: Attempted Kidnapping, Bajorans, Breeding, Cardassians, Children, Colony, Genetic Engineering, Hybrids, Kidnapping, Multi, Occupation of Bajor, Past Abuse, Racism, Utopia
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-20
Updated: 2020-06-03
Packaged: 2021-03-02 19:00:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 11
Words: 23,025
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24291724
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/evenstar8705/pseuds/evenstar8705
Summary: This is a sort of sequel to both 'Enemy Mine' and 'Nekea and Jonas'. Nekea and Jonas find themselves in what appears to be an ideal and safe place for Bajorans and Cardassians to co-habitat outside of Cardassian or Bajoran space. They make friends and adapt to a sort of pioneer life until children start disappearing under mysterious circumstances.
Relationships: Original Female Character/Original Male Character
Comments: 2
Kudos: 14





	1. Prologue

Nekea woke for seemingly no reason in the middle of the night and was annoyed. Her Bajoran husband Jonas was sleeping like a rock at her side. He was snoring lightly, not loudly, but it was enough to keep her lying awake instead of dozing back to sleep. She decided to rise and attempt sleep in the spare bedroom. She felt guilty doing this, but sometimes it couldn’t be helped. Falling asleep cuddled in her partner’s arms was wonderful but she had become accustomed to sleeping alone when she was still married to Dreth Rajo. Old habits die hard. Jonas didn’t take offense when he found her gone. He always seemed to understand.

She couldn’t rest alone either. Frustrated, she began an extremely early morning. She brewed a sort of coffee-like beverage made from a local root unique to their colony. It had been tested exhaustively by their science and biology experts and declared not only safe but beneficial. She missed the red leaf stimulant she had drunk in its stead back on Cardassia but she knew she could never go back there and nothing quite like that grew here. There was a chance they might find something like it. The planet was largely unexplored and wild.

Once she no longer felt groggy and properly awake, she began to cook breakfast. The staple of their diet was roots, tubers, and rice the Bajorans managed to grow even here. She had to admire their skill with farming. Cardassians had always been hopeless when it came to agriculture and such. That was seen as primitive and simple work fit for simpletons and slaves. They never called their workers slaves but Nekea knew now they usually forced Bajorans or other subjugated species to grow and process their food for too long. 

She berries, and crushed nuts with hardy rice. She left enough simmering on the stove for Jonas as she double checked their food supplies and then the traps. Sometimes pests and their predators found their way into their house, burrowing under the barriers. Some of the wildlife could be deadly if not handled properly. She had captured new species before for the science teams directly outside their door or within the rooms themselves.

Nekea realized that their barrier was fizzling and that meant their home was more vulnerable. She waited until her neighbors turned their night lamp off to signal they were awake and active before she knocked on their door. 

“Ona!” her neighbor Cara called her by her Bajoran name as she greeted her. “How are you this morning?”

“I can’t complain too much,” she responded. “Is your husband Caius terribly busy?”

“He has some house calls to make. Why?”

“Our barrier isn’t working properly. It’s not an immediate emergency, but could he put us on his list for maintenance? I know he’s terribly busy being the only real engineer in our village.”

“Of course! You are right next door and depending on how difficult the fix turns out to be, he’ll put you first!”

“Perhaps he could show me how to fix it myself if I describe the problem?”

Nekea had merely been an anthropology and archaeology student before she joined the colony. She hadn’t even graduated. Jonas made himself useful to the colony by providing medical care. Due to his forced labor, he knew something of building, mining, and other tasks. She tried to contribute by assisting the teachers certain days of the week and trying to learn and participate in the science work. Most days she went foraging and exploring with Cara or was designated a care giver for the myriad of hybrid children constantly being born. 

Nekea had another bad habit of feeling useless and unwanted. She was a Cardassian woman and yet she was a poor model of one. She didn’t possess the famous arrogance of her people or feelings of confidence and superiority. She had always preferred poetry and history over science and military skills. She suspected now that her family had less than pure Cardassian heritage. She had also been in a prolonged marriage with a Cardassian man that had been a subtle abuser and manipulator. She knew that didn’t compare to the experiences of the Bajoran women here so she downplayed her own and was quiet and withdrawn. 

She and Jonas were outliers among the population. All of the couples in their colony were made up of male Cardassians and their female Bajoran mates. Nekea was a strange case of a female Cardassian that had taken up with a male Bajoran. Their neighbors usually found their pairing ironic and amusing. Nekea herself was well liked if she could only believe it. She didn’t have a firmly established trade or career but she was helpful with the little ones and put her heart into whatever she attempted to work on regardless of her experience or skill. In such a village, every member of the community was vital to its survival.

Cara was the only person Nekea had truly befriended so far because they lived so close and they interacted so often. The Bajoran woman wasn’t shy. She was not a former comfort woman like the vast majority of the Bajoras. She had been a Resistance fighter and a hunting and foraging expert. She provided the lion share of the meat shared among the villagers more than the former Cardassian soldiers. Cardassians required meat in their diet more so than Bajorans and the hybrid children were wild cards. Some were born preferring their fruits and veggies and others went to bed disappointed without some meat. Cara knew something of survival too. She had practically been a feral child. 

“Ona, it’s still fairly early and a perfect time to go hunting. Would you like to accompany me?” Cara asked.

“Yes, I’d be more than happy to carry your supplies and keep you company.”

“Good!” Cara was used to the woman shying away from her offers so she was quite pleased. “Come on along!”

Nekea didn’t mind being the pack horse. She was naturally stronger than Cara and could carry the bundles over greater distances. As they walked they talked in low voices while keeping their eyes and ears peeled. Cara had plenty of fire power if something deadly came along.

“How is your pregnancy getting along and how are the rest of your children?” Nekea asked.

“The twins are just fine. Tomen lost his first baby tooth. This baby seems to be developing just fine,” Cara stroked her belly, not quite rounded with full pregnancy yet. “Are you and Jonas ever going to try having little ones?”

Nekea frowned, “Aren’t there enough mouths to feed? The colony needs to grow at a predictable rate. You are on your fourth child. I’ll let you have the babies for me.”

“A colony needs as much genetic variety as possible,” Cara replied. “Everyone is anticipating how your babies would turn out!”

“Why?” the Cardassian woman’s tone was sharp.

“Because you are the only Cardassian woman here! Will your babies turn out more Cardassian? Would they be like my twins? Would they-“

“Would they come out deformed or already dead?” Nekea interrupted nastily. “Not all of the couples here have proven compatible.”

Cara closed her mouth and realized she was the one being extremely pushy and rude. She hadn’t meant to offend her alien friend. She just wanted her to share in the experience of motherhood. Helping the other women to raise their children was noble and kind of Nekea, but the other women often felt sorry for her and knew it was not the same as raising their own. What she said was true, though. Some of the women found it difficult or impossible to conceive and there had been more than one stillbirth and some children had deformities. Most of them were benign but not always.

They stumbled upon a herd of creatures that looked like a cross between a rhino and a stegosaurus. Cara and Nekea crouched. Cara prepared her weapon as silently as possible while Nekea made no sound or movement. She barely appeared to breathe. Sometimes Cara envied the woman’s snake-like qualities.

“If we bag one of those, it will be an enormous amount of meat,” Nekea whispered. “But too much for me and you to carry.”

“I’ll call our men after we get a kill,” Cara whispered back.

They had to play the agonizing waiting game. The herd took its time grazing from the lower branches of trees and the alien bushes with nasty thorns but produced a wild fruit that the colonists had started calling a ‘tato’ because it was like a mix of a potato and tomato. Eventually a slowed and sickened creature fell behind the safety of the herd and that’s when Cara fired.

Nekea didn’t know how she did it, but she managed to shoot through the creature’s eye. The tough hide would make for good leather as a bonus. The rest of the herd stampeded away luckily in the opposite direction of the noise and flash and stench of death and smoke. Cara whooped like half an animal herself as she placed a foot on her kill. Then she used a primitive com system to call her mate as Nekea studied the animal to be certain it was truly dead and not suffering.

“Caius, we’ll need you to wake Jonas if he isn’t already out of bed. We have a bountiful harvest of meat if you two could help carry it.”

“We will be there soon as possible. Another couple just arrived at the community center when I went to get supplies.”

“Oh?” Cara wasn’t too excited because new couples arrived all the time.

“This couple is a bit different,” Caius added.

“How so?” 

“Well, tell Ona she’s not the only Cardassian female to fall in love with a Bajoran man anymore.”


	2. New Neighbors

“It’s so wonderful that there is another Cardassian woman here to befriend!” 

Nekea smiled shyly at that declaration. It was rare that women sought her out expressly for the purpose of friendship and it was true that she had been away from her own kind for perhaps longer than what was good for her. 

There were plenty of Cardassian men in the colony but that wasn’t the same. She missed her mother, aunts, her many cousins, and the extended female relatives she once had in the Rajo family. It helped enormously that this woman spoke her dialect. Cardassian language, as much as Central Command tried, could deviate in subtle ways. Cara could speak enough of the language to carry on casual conversations but she was the only Bajoran woman willing to converse with it. Nekea wasn’t as naturally talented learning language as Cara was. The children and older generations here often spoke a strange combination of Bajoran and Cardassian. Their fathers still spoke Cardassian frequently with the men and encouraged their sons and daughters to learn.

“We will have to build you a home,” Caius said. “The whole community will pitch in. What sort of work did you and your Bajoran do before you escaped or defected?”

“I was a doctor,” the woman answered. “I specialized in childbirth and delivery.”

“Really?” Cara cried out with joy. “We don’t have anyone of that background yet! We have a few midwives but no one with concrete professional training! That is most welcome to hear!”

“I had no trade,” the Bajoran man answered. “I performed whatever task my masters assigned me.”

“A jack of all trades, I see,” Jonas gestured to him. “And what are your names?”

“Daki Arlot,” the woman bowed her head. “You can call me Dr. Arlot.”

“I am Rilu Cuva,” the man said.

Nekea addressed them both by their surnames, “Welcome, Dr. Arlot and Rilu. You will be safe here. No one will judge your union, your beliefs or lack of them, your looks or your heritage.”

“The rumor is that this place is a sort of utopia.”

“Sure!” Jonas chuckled. “Once you get past all the wildlife trying to murder you and the elements trying to do the same.”

“At least it’s not people hunting you,” Rilu shuddered.

“Some people might stare at you,” Nekea warned them. “But that’s because you are new. The children will want to run right up to you and ask you questions. We have a different sort of culture than either of you are accustomed to.”

“Do you have a name for this colony?” Dr. Arlot asked.

“Had’lenga,” Caius gave up the name. “It is a combination of Bajoran and Cardassian. It means roughly translated: House of divine spirits.”

“How quaint!” Dr. Arlot smiled.

“Are you two hungry and thirsty?” Cara offered them sanitized water immediately.

“Hungry but not starving.”

“You will stay with one of the other families until your own house is completed. Tonight we will have a feast to celebrate your arrival. Do you require medical care or anything else?”

“No, we are relieved to have finally found this place!” Dr. Arlot reassured them. “It was just a rumor and we had to be certain no one was following us. Has the colony ever been found by less friendly visitors?”

“Not in its entire history, and if the Prophets are kind, it will never experience such a thing.”

“Uh, Jonas and I would like to offer our home!” Nekea said quickly.

“Yours is likely the best suggestion anyway!” Cara said cheerfully.

Cara and Caius went to spread the word. The new couple looked at her and Jonas. Dr. Arlot looked happy and Rilu looked extremely nervous. Nekea remembered they hadn’t given their names yet even though she’d opened their home to them.

“We are the Kylies,” she bowed in a respectful and humble gesture. “Jonas and Ona.”

“Ona?” Dr. Arlot raised an eyebrow. “Is that your real name?”

Nekea didn’t answer.

“I am sorry,” the doctor apologized. “You don’t have to reveal your real name. It’s just that one doesn’t sound very typical of a Cardassian woman.”

“It isn’t.”

“Follow us! We will show you your temporary home!” Jonas found being friendly and charismatic far easier than his wife did.

A roaring bonfire was lit and the entire village gathered outside the community center to greet the new neighbors. The children were raucous and playful. The adults were soon drunk on fermented fruits and stuffed full of the meat Cara and the others had provided that morning. There would be no leftovers after tonight. Dancing and singing was soon underway and the stars were shining above as the fire continued to burn.

“Ona,” Dr. Arlot gestured to her. 

“Yes?”

“I have this that we can share!” the woman produced a bottle of kanar.

Nekea brightened, “I can’t believe you brought that all these light years! What else do you have from home?”

“Not too much, I’m afraid. I do have a few bottles of yamok sauce.”

“Yamok sauce!” Nekea almost burst into tears of happiness. 

She didn’t care much for kanar before but she toasted with it out of pure nostalgia and fresh appreciation. She happened to love yamok sauce and poured it all over her meat and relished the first bite.

“Yamok sauce happens to be the one plentiful item I could store on our ship,” Dr. Arlot told her. “It helps they come in small compact bottles and a few drops go a long way to make a dish flavorful. I’ll give you a few bottles if you like? It’s the least I can do since you offered your home!”

“I’d like that very much! Thank you!”

Saria and Erik, Cara’s twins, came running over when they spotted the exotic food and drink. The children were about seven years old and among the most active of their village. Because there were two of them, they were especially bold and fearless. 

“Wow, look at these children!” Dr. Arlot exclaimed. “Hyrbrids?”

“All of the children are mixed,” Jonas explained. “Look more carefully at the adults. There are first, second, even third generations that have interbred with the other species. The further the generation the less you can tell, but there are signs.”

“Yes!” the doctor squinted. “But isn’t it beautiful in a way?”

Jonas and Nekea were pleasantly surprised by her attitude. Even if she had taken a Bajoran mate, most Cardassians and Bajorans were repulsed or at least a little ashamed of hybrids. Nekea loved Jonas but she knew her family back home would think she’d gone mad eloping with an alien. If they had children she hated to think what they would call them if they acknowledged them at all. Her family had no idea where she was. That was sad, but it couldn’t be helped. As for Jonas, he had no family to return to.

“Boy, girl,” Dr. Arlot called to them since she didn’t know their names. “May I get a closer look at your skin? I’ll let you have a sip of kanar if you allow it!”

The twins were proud of their features and wanted to try the strange black liquid. They were more than happy to agree to the deal. The Cardassian woman studied them as much as she could before Erik guzzled the kanar while Saria nagged him to let her have a turn. Their little brother Tomen began to stumble over on his chubby toddler legs.

“That one looks a little scrawnier,” Rilu had barely spoken. “I’m guessing he’s a bit more sickly and fragile than the twins?”

“He is,” Jonas said with a little reservation. “There doesn’t seem to be any severe problems, of course, but Cara and Caius are hoping that he grows out of things like asthma and allergies.”

“I’m sorry, but what profession did you say you belonged to before?” Nekea hid a hint of suspicion.

“I told you before I had none,” Rilu said.

“And I specialized in obstetrics and gynecology.”

She supposed that explained her scientific curiosity about the children and hybrids were never a dull subject. 

“Are you full blooded Cardassian, Ona?” the doctor asked her.

“Excuse me?” she blurted.

“Your hair isn’t pure black like mine and your eyes are dark not blue.”

“I am not a hybrid or a third generation if that is what you mean,” Nekea bristled a bit. “I am as much a Cardassian woman as you are!”

“Why are you taking offense? I thought you said no one in this colony cared about such things?”

Jonas responded, “My wife is just self conscious about her looks in general. Her husband constantly belittled her.”

“Jonas!” Nekea hissed.

They had only just met this couple! Even if they had offered to take them in, that was a temporary arrangement. She also didn’t like him bringing up Dreth or her past. This night was supposed to be about welcoming them not inviting them into every aspect of their lives! Why did Bajorans have to be so quick to trust?

“I’m being intrusive,” the woman looked troubled. “Forgive my curiosity. I never quite fit in on my planet though I didn’t know it until I met Cuva. I ask far too many questions and spill my beans like a clumsy and needy child.”

“I can relate to that,” Nekea muttered. 

“Maybe that’s why you fell for Jonas!”

“Do you two have children?” Rilu asked the other man.

“No.”

“I find it hard to believe not one of these little ones running around is yours!”

“Did the two of you have children?” Nekea was desperate to change the subject and didn’t like all their pointed questions so soon. She didn’t think even Bajorans were so nosy. “Are you pregnant right now, Dr. Arlot?”

“I already tested our genomes for compatibility,” the other couple didn’t seem to mind the turnabout. “Alas, we are not compatible enough for offspring.”

“And you don’t mind?”

“I can’t help who I fall in love with.”

Nekea was startled by that answer and Jonas asked, “How did the two of you meet?”

“I was sickened with sludge lung,” Rilu put a hand over his rib cage. “That’s what we called the condition privately. My contractors, or slave masters, were a little better about keeping their workers healthy so they could get the most profit out of us. They sent me to a doctor. Daki treated me because she was the only doctor or nurse that would do it.”

“I treated and pitied the man,” she confessed. “And then I fell in love with him. I couldn’t bear the thought of him going back into the mines only to sicken again or worse. An anonymous message came to me from the Dissidents, I suspect. It was coordinates to this colony. I didn’t hesitate. I took Cuva away as soon as I could arrange it.”

“Something sort of similar happened with us,” Jonas wouldn’t say anything more than that and Nekea said less.

“Ona, your mate mentioned a former husband.”

Nekea clamped her mouth shut and folded her arms before her breast. Jonas wasn’t fool enough to blurt out anything more.

“I had no husband or lovers,” Dr. Arlot took the hint but was still amazingly forthcoming. “I was too busy and, for some reason, I was never attracted to the males of my own species.”

“Ona must have seemed like a monster to you!” Rilu addressed Jonas.

Nekea couldn’t help but wince and Jonas answered, “Only because I was brutalized by the males of her species. Obviously I realized she was a beautiful and compassionate woman. And what of you and your woman?”

Rilu grinned and that was the first time he’d smiled in any way, “She treated me very well. She needed no drugs to give me relief and pleasure.”

Dr. Arlot giggled, “Oh, Cuva, stop!”

She kissed him right then and there! Nekea wasn’t offended or repulsed. She didn’t mind public displays of affection. It was just that the Bajorans were so much more open about that. Cardassians kept their affections behind closed doors and she was too shy to do much more than hold hands with Jonas. It wasn’t just cultural bias that prevented her.

“If you like, Ona, I could test you and Jonas for compatibility.”

“No.”

“No?”

“I am not interested, doctor. Jonas, dance with me!”

“As you command!”

She saw that the doctor and her Bajoran began to mingle with the other villagers. Cara and Caius were dancing together as well.

“They seem nice,” Cara said to Nekea.

“They are very interesting.”

“I’m happy they are here. Their company will be good for you, my Cardassian sister.”

“I hope you know they gave your twins kanar.”

“How much?” Cara’s tone was sharp as a whip.

“A few sips.”

“That’s nothing! In fact, that’s probably why they fell asleep so soon! I’ll thank Dr. Arlot later!”


	3. Candid Conversation

Nekea didn’t mind having another couple under their roof. She gave up her spare bedroom and joined Jonas in his bed. Using sleep aids helped enormously and her husband wasn’t complaining. In fact, they were both experiencing a sudden spike in their libidos. They had a healthy intimate life before but in the past few weeks, it was as though someone or something had brought their passion to a bubbling boil. Maybe it was the close proximity to each other as they relaxed for sleep and stopped worrying about daily tasks. Maybe it was seeing the other couple being so affectionate. Maybe it was Nekea’s improvement in her overall mood. She couldn’t keep her hands off her mate’s smooth skin.

“I think we are getting more sex than sleep!” Jonas laughed that morning as he rubbed his eyes. 

“I’m sorry.”

He sighed and nuzzled her neck and shoulders, “Ona, why are you apologizing?”

“It’s just that,” she struggled to answer, “I don’t want to drain you or drive you away.”

He planted a kiss on her lips, “You are my wife! I love spending this sort of time with you! It’s worth the lack of sleep! This is what our youth is for! It is for long and passionate nights!”

Before she could control herself, she said, “That’s what Dreth used to say. Then he started complaining of headaches or stomach aches. He told me I was-“

“Clingy?”

“Desperate!”

“You know I would never treat you the way he did, right?”

She lowered her eyes.

“Nekea?” he used her real name to jar her back to reality.

“Jonas, I love you.”

“I love you. I wish you would believe me when I said that!”

“I do!” she insisted. “It’s just that relationships and people can change. I don’t want to be caught completely off guard by that again!”

“That is true, but if one of us is going to change, it won’t be me. Some changes are for the better too.”

“You can turn me down if you ever feel the need.”

“I have before and I can tell it hurts you.”

“Only if it’s repetitive and I can’t see a clear reason for it. I don’t want you to pretend with me.”

“There is nothing false between us!”

Nekea blinked away tears, “I know. I am sorry. I’m not making any sense.”

“Yes, you are. That man poisoned you. He caused you to always doubt yourself and second guess your decisions and the actions and motives of others. I get it. You must stop apologizing to me.”

“You are too good for me, Jonas!”

He made her look at him, “No, I’m not too good! You deserve me and so much more! Got it?”

She managed a genuine smile. Then they heard Dr. Arlot calling them down. Today was the other couples’ turn to cook and care for the household chores. Nekea and Jonas dressed hastily and tried to pretend it was a normal morning. 

“Caius and Cara let us know today that the house is nearly finished!” Rilu told them as they shared breakfast.

“I’m sure that is a relief!” Jonas winked. “Your own home!”

“It’s on the other side of the village, but I plan to come over frequently to visit,” the Cardassian woman promised. “Where else will Ona get her yamok sauce?”

They all laughed and Rilu told them, “Caius proposed a relaxing day of fishing for us, Jonas. He said he has been craving fish, any type of fish. What sorts of water critters are on this planet?”

“All sorts! There’s a sort of rainbow colored trout that is delicious when we can get it! The fish aren’t used to being fished so they nibble at the lines and aren’t scared off by people yet. That makes catching dinner easier.”

“And what are we to do as you men go off relaxing?” Nekea demanded.

Rilu shrugged, “Girl stuff?”

“Like knitting or gossiping? Please!” Dr. Arlot rolled her eyes. 

“Cara will want to hunt but she can’t bring the children.”

“Then let’s volunteer to watch them while she hunts. She’s getting pretty far into her pregnancy. She won’t be able to hunt for much longer. It may be her last opportunity until long after the baby is born.”

“You are absolutely right about that.”

They finished cleaning up after the meal and then the four of them walked next door. The twins were running through the yard already under their father’s watchful eye. Tomen was being fed by his mother inside. He was a fussy eater. 

“Ready for fishing?” Caius grinned at the men.

“Aye.”

“Come on along then!”

They gathered the gear and made for the banks of the river. There were small boats and a dock that belonged to the entire community. Jonas and Caius took to the water like ducks but Rilu seemed out of his comfort zone.

“Not from a fisherman’s caste, are you?” Jonas asked as the other Bajoran clutched at the boat.

“No.”

The river was mostly calm and gentle but they had ground over a few hidden rocks that caused the boat to rock a little. 

“Please tell me you at least know how to swim!” the Cardassian man stared at him in alarm.

“As a matter of fact, I don’t. I have never been near bodies of water.”

“What djarra did you belong to anyway?” Jonas pried.

“I don’t know.”

“How can you not know that? The Cardassians dismantled our caste system officially, but in some circles, Bajorans still abide by it socially. Your parents were born to one djarra or another.”

“I was taken from my parents.”

“That’s unusual,” Caius narrowed his eyes. “Why would the soldiers take an infant from their parents?”

“To be cruel, no doubt!” Rilu couldn’t help but glare at the alien in the boat.

“I’m not denying that my people can be cruel, but that story just doesn’t make any sense. What would the soldiers do with a noisy, messy brat?”

“They gave me to an established Cardassian household. They wanted me to be a sort of house slave. They even tried to educate me the way they did with Cardassian children.”

“As some sort of experiment?” Caius pressed. “They take young girls and educate them that way to be proper comfort women for the most elite of the soldiers but I have never heard of a single case of them doing that with a male Bajoran!”

“Do you really expect me to explain the madness of sadists and abusers?”

“Doesn’t your earring contain a family crest?” Jonas pointed to his ear. “How could they have not kept the names of your parents somewhere on file? Cardassians love their records and files!”

“They also take blood and dental samples as standard procedure,” Caius nodded. “If they took you from your parents and educated you, Rilu, they had some sort of sinister plan for you.”

“May I see your earring?”

Rilu looked panicked and would have jumped from the boat and their interrogation if he could only swim. Jonas decided to stop pressuring him, but he noticed that despite his obvious stress, the Bajoran man didn’t sweat. He was so open about nearly every subject but his past before. Why was he being so evasive?

When Caius saw that Jonas had dropped his pursuit, the Cardassian man decided to leave it alone as well. He pretended he was distracted by a bite to his line. Jonas checked a trap left in the water the day before by someone else. There were some crawfish inside so he placed them in the pail of water in the boat and reset the trap.

“How many children do you and Cara hope to have?” Rilu asked.

“I don’t have a particular number in mind. We both came from large families. When she says she’s had enough, then we’ve a complete family.”

“How sweet.”

Caius scowled, “Sweet? Never use that word to describe me or my wife again!”

“Is it true that you forced yourself on your wife?”

Jonas made a sound of shock at Rilu’s pointed question. He supposed the man wanted a bit of revenge for being so deeply questioned by a former enemy species. He had wanted to ask this question of every single Cardassian man within the colony. The comfort woman system didn’t nurture a healthy consensual relationship between the Cardassian men and Bajoran women.

To their surprise, Caius seemed amused by the question and he didn’t lie, “I may have forced myself on her the first one and a half times.”

“One and a half?” Jonas was horrified.

The Cardassian let out a dark laugh.

There was an uncomfortable silence until Rilu let out a startled cry. A fish had taken his bait and was pulling on his line. He had no idea what to do. The other men helped him haul the catch into the boat. It was a long river eel with rainbow scales. 

“Beginner’s luck!” Jonas clapped him on the shoulder.

“Did Ona force herself on you?”

“Did she what?” Jonas turned a shade of purple.

Caius laughed again and said, “Go on, Bajoran! Answer his question! Or did you force yourself on her?”

“Neither of us forced ourselves on the other!” he sputtered with indignation. “In the name of the Prophets, what gave you the impression that every relationship here began so violently?”

“I’m just curious,” Rilu murmured. “And I wonder why neither of you seem interested in children. Did she already have children with her Cardassian husband?”

“Ona wouldn’t want me discussing this!”

“I’ve been living with you like a brother for some time now. If you want me to spill my guts I want to know about you first!”

Caius had become quiet. He had never asked questions about Jonas and his wife and he had known the couple far longer. He didn’t like Rilu’s manner of broaching the subject either. Then again, Cardassians were suspicious and secretive by nature.

“Their marriage was childless.”

“Was it also sexless?”

“Jonas,” Caius spoke up, “you don’t have to answer that.”

“I don’t want him thinking terrible things about Ona!” Jonas shot back. “She’d never leave children behind!”

“She must have hated her husband. Did she have an affair with you? Did she fear for her life and yours? Who kissed who first? Daki kissed me. I wasn’t expecting it and was drugged and half conscious. I thought I was dreaming at first. What would a woman like her want with someone like me? And especially when I couldn’t give her children? I was curious, so I went along with whatever she wanted to do. I didn’t expect it to happen again. But it did many times more.”

“You don’t have to tell me these things! I just wanted to know what caste you belonged to and why the hell you never learned a basic survival skill like swimming! If a man can’t swim, why would he get into a boat and risk drowning?”

“I wanted to converse with my two friends.”

“Friends?” Caius sneered. “Is that what you call me?”

“Should I not? Would you prefer I call you my enemy?”

“Ona and I kissed each other!” Jonas had to set the record straight. “Do you hear me? We kissed each other! We didn’t go any further than that until after her marriage to that awful monster was dissolved and he was dead! We are both capable of children, but we have decided we don’t want them for now, perhaps never! Are you happy?”

“Did she kill him?”

“Prophets, no! My Ona couldn’t hurt a fly!”

“Daki has killed for me.”

Even Caius was becoming a bit unnerved. It took a lot to disturb a former Cardassian soldier. He started to look at Rilu Cuva with a different set of eyes. Was it with respect instead of slight contempt?

“I murdered my former comrade to protect Cara,” he confessed.

Jonas clutched his hair and knocked over the pail of crawfish in his alarm and disgust. The crustaceans began to crawl about the floor of the wooden boat searching for an escape.

“That’s it!” Jonas cried. “I’m done with this sick little game of revealing secrets and trying to tick others into spouting theirs! We have a decent catch. The man that can’t even swim caught a river monster! Can we head back now and stop talking?”

“Fine by me,” Caius took up a paddle. 

They rowed in silence for a long while and Jonas was happy for it. He gathered up the crawfish and placed them back into the pail with fresh water. They pinched but he didn’t much care. 

“Does any part of you want to be a father, Jonas?” 

Jonas made a fist, “You just couldn’t help yourself, could you, Rilu? I asked for silence!”

“It’s the last question today, I swear.”

“Not really. If everyone is going to assume my child is a product of twisted love or rape, should I?”

“You shouldn’t give a damn what other people think, Jonas!” Caius told him through gritted teeth. “Cara and I don’t and I hope neither will our children! This isn’t Bajor or Cardassia! We all come here with a clean slate!”

Jonas admired the Cardassian man a great deal for that.

When they returned to the docks, Cara and Nekea was there to greet them with the children around them. They all looked terribly upset.

“What is it?” the men leaped from the boat, fearing the worst.

“A little girl has gone missing,” Cara announced with a pale face. “Braka wandered off and has been missing all morning and afternoon. The whole village is being asked to search for her.”

“The poor child is only ten years old!” Nekea said.


	4. Red Flags

The village searched all day and night for the missing child. Most of the population had their Bajoran style earrings that served as a sort of tracking device. The former Resistance fighters utilized it to track their children and pierced them younger, forgoing the normal piercing ceremony meant as a sort of coming of age ritual in their culture. The Cardassian fathers saw it as too practical not to use on their offspring. 

Despite this useful tactic, the sensors didn’t pick up any sign of the little girl. The parents were frantic and searched long after everyone ceased. Nekea felt for them. She had cared for Braka several times before and found her to be a delightful child. The elders knew many villagers wanted to extend the search but they had to be realistic. The colony was barely civilized and the planet was far from tame. Any number of creatures could have made off with the girl.

“We should have at least one person search until something is found!” Cara insisted. “If only for the sake of the parents’ sanity!"

“And who should we spare for that grisly task?”

“I’ll scout for Braka!”

“You are now heavily pregnant. Would you risk your unborn child? We have lost children before. It is unfortunate, but nature can be unkind.”

“Wait a minute!” Nekea barged into the conversation. “What do you mean you have lost children before?”

“It’s true,” Caius said with no trace of dark humor in this case. “The year that my wife and I arrived another little girl named Anket loved the river too much. She bobbed under the water and never came up.”

“Did a body wash up later?”

“No but her earring did. It is thought that the lizard lions got her,” the elders answered.

“Do they normally consume all trace including the bones?”

“Have you seen how quickly animals and bones can decompose here?”

“Fine and what of before that?”

“Ten years before more children were lost.”

“And yet there were no bodies?”

“Not a single child was ever found dead or alive. Sometimes the earrings were found and other times not.”

“Do you keep a record of this?”

The elders were reluctant to speak of tragedies but they eventually led Nekea to their records. In Cardassian style, they had kept records of all sorts of information. She had never thought to look at the library of notes before but now she was determined.

“Since we have not been assigned tasks in the village yet, I volunteer myself and my mate as scouts,” Rilu offered the near hysterical parents.

The villagers agreed as Nekea pored over decades of records. 

The colony had been founded right as the Occupation had begun generations ago. When Cardassia declared real interspecies marriages invalid and demanded offspring from such unions be offered up or destroyed, hundreds of families were forced to flee. Those families intermarried and produced offspring and hundreds of new pairs arrived to further supplement the population until it was in the thousands and still growing.

She found the names of the first established leaders of the community. They offered up their signatures, their former surnames, clans, castes, and other personal information for posterity. The Cardassian patriarchs provided blood prints and the Bajoran matriarchs had sketched illustrations of their crests. It was quite fascinating to see the clash and compromise of cultures. Bajorans had always been a far more oral and spiritual people while the Cardassians were secular and obsessively tracked everything.

There were lists of couples and when they appeared. There were dates of weddings and family trees weaving together former enemies into close knit clans. There were reports of harvests, catalogs of animals and plants, medicines and threats, weather and geographical scans. It was inevitable that there would be obituaries and Nekea visited the gravesite placed far enough from the village that it was out of sight and out of mind. Cardassians had never liked their dead to be found by strangers while Bajorans demanded it be near enough they could visit and honor their ancestors often.

One unspoken talent that Nekea had was that she could read a page at a mere glance and with her Cardassian memory she didn’t need to take more than that to remember the information when she was triggered to do so. She wondered that the current elders had never shown much interest in browsing very diligently at all the files. They were children and in some cases, grandchildren of the original founders. Her passion for history and love of family legacies and connections in particular served her well.

In the near fifty years of the colony history, no fewer than fifty children had disappeared or been ‘claimed’ by the wildlife. Many of the vanishings had taken place in a wave when the colony was in its infancy but there were plenty of them spread sporadically throughout the rest of the timeline. Nekea couldn’t help but notice that nearly all of the children that had vanished without a trace of a body were girl children. If a body was found it was always male. She reconfirmed that when she walked through the graveyard and gazed at the stone markers with both Cardassian and Bajoran script.

Another curious thing was that some teenagers the generation before had not gone missing per se, but they had reported vivid night terrors or lost time. The closest thing the colony had during that era to a detective or experienced investigator had assumed something unknown in the alien atmosphere or water had affected them and caused hallucinations or the youths were in on some prank. Teenagers loved to report missing time to disguise delinquent or promiscuous activity. 

When Jonas brought Nekea a meal, she was searching everything just to be sure she wasn’t missing any information carelessly.

“You may have found your calling,” he said. “You could be the colony historian and librarian.”

“Has Braka been found?” she had completely lost track of time because Cardassians could be so single minded.

“The Prophets have not guided her home.”

“Jonas, I swear there is something ominous going on here,” she whispered. “Fifty disappearances in fifty years in such a small population and all of them are of the female sex?”

“What are you saying?”

“That can’t be coincidence.”

“Ona-“

“How has this colony never been ferreted out by Central Command before?”

“The Dissidents protect it.”

“How could the Obsidian Order not know about it?”

Jonas was Bajoran but even he grew uneasy when that particular organization was mentioned aloud. The saying was that if they were spoken of an agent would hear and appear whether the speaker was clever enough to notice or not.

“If there is an ounce of truth to what you are saying, we must not mention this until we have some sort of proof!” Jonas said warily. “How could they possibly spirit away children without anyone seeing anything suspicious?”

“They could be using beaming technology.”

“From where? Space?”

“They could be far closer than that.”

As Nekea said that, she gazed around for bugs and recording devices. It had never occurred to her that in this place she would ever have to worry about such observation again. Being constantly watched was something she had been only too comfortable with on her home world but as soon as she arrived to her new habitat she felt an enormous relief she had never known. The other Cardassians had admitted they felt a feeling of freedom that was completely foreign before. They had no idea how wonderful it was to simply have real privacy. The Bajorans, not even during the Occupation, could never fully understand.

“I don’t think we are ever going to find the poor girl, Jonas,” she said mournfully.

“Well, Dr. Arlot and Rilu won’t give up searching.”

For a fleeting moment Nekea had a terrible thought and then dismissed it. These disappearances had been happening far too long for any single person to be responsible. It was pure coincidence that the strange couple had arrived. She remembered Caius mentioned Anket vanishing a few years before. Obsidian agents prided themselves on being invisible like true snakes in the grass.

“Let’s go home, Jonas. You are right. We can’t speak of this to not a soul.”

“My lips are sealed, Ona.”

She left the food untouched.


	5. Desperate

Nekea’s words were proven right. For once, she wished she had been wrong. She was usually wrong about aught else. The child Braka wasn’t found in the following days or weeks. The community recited the death chant to sooth her lost pagh in case she was expired. They didn’t want her returning as a Borhya. The parents refused to burn the traditional duranja until she was actually proven dead.

Cara gave birth to her child. The birth didn’t go as easily as it had with her past experiences. She labored long and painfully. Caius had to be led away because his anxiety was catching and Dr. Arlot had to intervene. When she extracted the baby, the cord was threatening to strangle him. She was forced to cut it and then the mother was in serious danger of bleeding to death. Luckily they had a regenerator and real doctor on hand.

“Is Cara alright?” Caius was near his last nerve. “Is the baby alive or dead?”

“The mother is in recovery. Jonas knows Bajoran pain remedies better for their people. Congratulations, you have another son!”

The doctor presented the boy to his father. The Cardassian man wept with joy and relief. Nekea was touched by his sentiment. She almost wished she could bear a child of her own.

“What is his name?”

“Matthias,” Caius declared with pride.

As Jonas and Rilu went to spread the news knowing it would be especially welcome since the recent loss, Nekea went to her Bajoran sister’s bedside. Cara seemed a little weak and delirious but the bleeding had ceased and her pain was ebbing. 

“Where’s my baby?” she moaned. “Was it a boy or girl?”

“It’s a healthy boy.”

“Another boy?” she made a sound of disappointment as she slumped her head back on the pillow. “I wanted a little sister for Saria!”

“Girl hybrids seem to be rare.”

“I was an only girl and didn’t want that for my daughter. It’s not fair!”

“Didn’t you say you wanted many more children?”

“Dr. Arlot told me it might be too risky. She has already seen to it that I never conceive again.”

“Cara, is that what you really wanted?” Nekea cried.

“Ona, I almost died! If that woman wasn’t here, my son would be dead for sure! She was already in the perfect setting and circumstance to cauterize my tubes. She asked if that was what I wanted her to do and I said she could.”

“You were in no ideal state of mind to make that decision!”

“What?” Cara sounded angry.

“I mean you had just experienced traumatic labor! Did you get a chance to discuss such a life altering decision with your husband?”

“You know him well enough. He would have enthusiastically agreed.”

“I’m not so sure.”

She held the mother’s hand but sealed her lips. Now was not the time to debate this subject with her. Furthermore, the twins and Tomen were whining to see their mom and brand new sibling. Cara strained herself to disguise her condition and appear strong and energetic so as not to worry them.

“It’s a shame that she didn’t have another set of twins!” Dr. Arlot clucked to herself as she returned from sanitizing her body and clothes. “Especially a pair of identical girls! I would kill to see that!”

“Why did you sterilize her so hastily?” Nekea tried not to sound accusing.

“She asked me to.”

“After you suggested it at the worst possible time.”

“Ona, I am a medical professional that knows all about birthing and breeding. Cara was likely permanently damaged by this baby. Her twins are fantastic creatures but Tomen is on the sickly side and this Matthias is a runt! Any children she bears from now on will be nothing to brag about.”

“How can you be so sure of that? I’m not a doctor, but I’ve seen for myself that Bajorans are not as fragile as we Cardassians label them as! Cara might have just needed time to heal. As a doctor, you could come up with special accommodations to assist future births. Perhaps the Bajoran midwives might have had suggestions? And as for the children, who are you to judge them? Tomen may grow to become far stronger than the twins! Matthias may not be strong, but he could become the smartest of his generation! A hybrid child was born with cerebral palsy and yet he is a genius heading the science team as an adult!”

“He is also sterile like half of the hybrid males in this colony.”

“How do you know that?” Nekea roared.

“I’ve taken samples from nearly all of them by now. I have a vast database that tracks their bloodlines, fertility, and it can even suggest which women they should mate with and which to avoid.”

Nekea shuddered, “Sounds exactly like the sort of thing we hated on Cardassia: Extreme eugenics!”

“It is selective breeding necessary for any aspiring parent. We all want to pass on nothing but the best genes to the next generation! That’s basic science and evolution!” the doctor defended herself.

“If that’s the case, how could you possibly take Rilu as your mate? Shouldn’t you detest hybrids? Why are you so fascinated by the idea of mixing the species?”

“Because there are positive gains to be had from them!”

Nekea stared at her in astonishment, “Do you really believe that?”

“Do you think that’s so scandalous? Which one of us is being racist now?” Dr. Arlot snorted.

“It’s not the philosophy of Cardassia.”

“Only because they haven’t studied the genes like I have and they are stubborn and biased! Ona, think of all the problems cold climates cause our soldiers! Imagine if all of us had the gift of poikilothermy like Erik and Saria! That is just one benefit I can name off the top of my head! Did you know Cardassia has more and more infertility issues? We need the Bajorans! We need their DNA!”

“This isn’t Cardassia. We have all cut ties with our pasts and our people,” Nekea reminded her. “I don’t care about the future of blood lines; I care about the people around me in the here and now. I love Cara like a sister. You should have given her more time to decide if she should be sterilized. I think what you did was unethical in a moral and professional sense. She may regret this decision in time and neither of us can fix it!”

“Ona, you are a sweet and loyal woman, aren’t you?” the other Cardassian sighed. “I’m not saying that to be derisive. I admire you. It makes you very appealing compared to others of our kind. No wonder Jonas loves you so much. Sometimes I envy you.”

“Rilu seems to care for you.”

“Yes, but that might be because I was in a position of such power over him. He was never exposed to many Bajoran women. I can’t bear his children.”

The doctor’s voice became thin and quiet. She was showing subtle signs of real hurt and Nekea began to feel guilty. She could be fierce when defending her friends and she counted Daki Arlot as one of them too. 

“I am sorry,” she apologized aloud.

“Why haven’t you conceived yet?” was the woman’s reply.

“Excuse me?”

“Well, I couldn’t help but notice that you and Jonas have been very amorous lately. We lived under your roof.”

“I thought we were being discreet!” Nekea was humiliated and exposed.

“No need to be embarrassed!” the doctor chuckled. “It’s quite healthy and natural! I would have been concerned if I never heard a peep! You are both very discreet and polite, but no couple is THAT polite!”

“We are both on birth control.”

“Both of you?” the doctor’s face fell. “I assumed you might be taking something but him?”

“He does it as both a courtesy and a necessity!”

“Why so many precautions? You were married before. Did you hate that man so much you vowed never to have his children? Did you want your marriage dissolved? A few years more and the government might have done that for you!”

Nekea let out a dry laugh, “Perhaps that was his goal, not mine! No, we simply never conceived. Dreth would pull out.”

“That’s not an effective method of birth control at all! You were intimate with him before the marriage, yes? Jonas once hinted the two of you were together almost eight years! In all that time, he should have gotten you pregnant! Unless he was sterile or you are?”

“I don’t know what the hell was wrong with that man!” Nekea was bitter whenever talking about her former husband. “I took birth control for a short while but not to prevent pregnancy.”

“Why else would a woman take something like that?”

“I was hoping to kill my sex drive! I got so tired of being turned down by that man. I became convinced I wasn’t normal. I thought I was a freak! I wanted the pain to stop! I wanted to focus on anything but my desire! It always turned to despair!” 

Dr. Arlot looked horrified, “Oh, you poor darling! Why didn’t you just cuckold that man?”

“I was too loyal and when I did feel attraction to another man, I felt even more monstrous, that’s why. I didn’t want to shame my husband or our families! Not even Jonas could tempt me to do that! The worst part is that the birth control didn’t work. Dreth still refused me and I stopped caring and taking the stuff. It only gave me stomach cramps that made me wonder if I was constantly bleeding internally!”

Nekea hadn’t even confessed these sorts of things to Jonas! She didn’t know why she couldn’t stop. Luckily the Cardassian woman at her side seemed to be sympathetic and supportive. It felt so good to have someone confirm that what she had been put through was unacceptable.

“So he was sterile and you were fertile? Could that explain his lack of drive?”

“I am fertile but probably only as much as my mother was. She suffered so many miscarriages. The problem is not conceiving in my maternal line. It is carrying the child to full term that is difficult for us. I’m terrified if I tried to have children they’d never get past the first few weeks!”

Dr. Arlot seemed to have a eureka moment and she said, “The problem was with the Cardassian men, Ona, and not you! Don’t you understand?”

“No!”

“Your mother had dark eyes and lighter colored hair too, didn’t she?”

“Yes.”

“And Dreth never managed to get you pregnant even though he should have in theory.”

“Thank goodness he never did!”

“Ona, you must have some Bajoran heritage! It explains everything! Dreth wasn’t sterile, he was genetically incompatible! You and your mother are perfect breeding partners for Bajoran men and not Cardassian men.”

“What?”

“Look at Caius! He’s a Cardassian man that was told he was sterile all his life! He was convinced of it until he got Cara with twins! He was incompatible with Cardassian women but a match for Bajoran women!”

“I’m not Bajoran!”

“You have never heard of the Kelani Cardassians, have you?”

“Yes, they’re different but-“

“They have Bajoran ancestry!”

“Even if that was true, I’m not Kelani!”

“But you probably are, Ona! They managed to spread themselves outside of their province. Think back to the dig you once worked at!” Dr. Arlot pointed at the Groov figurine Nekea still wore every day around her neck proudly now. “There were pockets of Kelani in your province obviously! Your maternal line is Kelani!”

Nekea wasn’t repulsed by the idea of being Bajoran even in some sort of small trace, but it was a lot for her brain to accept. She clutched the bone artifact and visualized her mother and then her grandmother. She thought of how she was attracted to Jonas the instant she saw him and more so than she had ever been to Dreth Rajo. She looked at her pale gray skin and in her bones she accepted the truth.

“What does that mean? Why do you care so much?” she asked.

“Ona, will you be my surrogate?”

“What?”

“Ona, I am not compatible with Rilu!” Dr. Arlot’s eyes became pleading. “I wish I was. I wish I could have hybrid children just like Saria and Erik, but I’m not remotely Bajoran! I’m a pure Cardassian. You are the only woman here or perhaps even on Cardassia that can give me that!”

“No!” Nekea blurted.

“No?”

“No, Daki, I can’t do such a thing for you!”

“Why not?” she looked as though she would burst into tears.

“Cara wanted many children. I still have no desire to have any. It doesn’t matter if they are full Cardassian, hybrid, or if they miraculously came out Bajoran! I couldn’t possibly volunteer my body for you either.”

“I would take good care of you! The babies would be mine! I could have Cuva impregnate you via invitro fertilization or the natural way. Whatever method you prefer!”

Nekea actually physically reacted with revulsion when that suggestion was made. She couldn’t help but imagine the Bajoran man entering the room to seduce her or force himself on her. She imagined being swollen with pregnancy and miserable. She thought of how hard it would be to hand over the fruit of her womb to this woman she liked well enough but at times seemed cold and calculating and not like a warm and loving mother. She couldn’t bear any of it.

“Jonas would never approve of such an arrangement!” she said hastily. 

“He has nothing to do with this! It would be your body and your decision! Please, Ona, I am desperate!”

“Then keep trying on your own with your mate!” Nekea hissed. “Don’t let your Bajoran near me! I don’t want to be your vessel! I just can’t do it! Leave me alone!”

She looked like a cornered animal and finally doctor Arlot relented.

“Your decision makes me sad,” she said, “but I must respect it. Think about it long and hard. Maybe you will change your mind?”

“I doubt it.”


	6. Yamok sauce

“Is everything alright?” Jonas asked her as she stroked his bare back that night.

“Yes,” she wasn’t necessarily lying.

When he tried to twist around to face her, she motioned for him to relax. She kept tracing the old wounds in his skin. The nerves in his back were dead and couldn’t be resurrected. Jonas had been offered by several villagers to have the scars removed and he had decided to keep them as a badge of honor. Their existence bothered Nekea more than it did him. It was proof that he was made of stronger stuff than her. All of her scars were psychological and her past haunted her more. Maybe Bajorans were just mentally resilient?

She decided to keep Dr. Arlot’s request to herself. She didn’t want Jonas to think ill of her. Although Nekea had been disturbed she understood that the desire to reproduce was instinct and further encouraged in Cardassian culture. Bajorans had children because they wanted to bring more souls into the universe. Her people did it to remain strong and expand their influence. 

“You just want to cuddle and sleep tonight?”

“Yes. I am tired.”

“So am I. I’m always up for another activity if you like. Wake me if you have to.”

“No, I think we have overindulged. I am honestly tired and we both need more sleep. Sometimes sleep is better than anything else.”

“Has something changed?”

“I don’t think so. At least not between us, if that is a cause for concern.”

“Maybe there was something in that yamok sauce that makes you go wild!” Jonas joked. “You haven’t been pouring that stuff liberally on your meals the past few days.”

“That’s because I ran out and delayed asking Daki for another.”

She stopped drawing circles and script on his back as she froze in thought. Her husband’s words were meant to be harmless joke, but now that he had mentioned it, she was deeply suspicious. It did seem that her consumption of yamok sauce directly correlated to her spike in libido.

“Is it true that Cardassian men never use birth control?” he asked.

“It’s not typical,” she frowned. “Dreth refused to use it. Why?”

“Rilu was asking me about male birth control. He was astonished such a thing even existed. We Bajorans have many methods for both sexes that we have kept secret from Cardassians with good reason. It prevented our women from many unwanted pregnancies. No one thought it necessary until hybrids were reported. Before that we rarely used it. Children from any union were seen as a blessing, but alien unions? Was the child even born with a pagh? That was always a hot debate for our Vedek Assembly. Kai Opaka insisted that at the very least such children were half Bajoran. Of course they must have a pagh! She demanded that women stop committing infanticide when hybrids were born.”

“Did the Bajorans keep any sort of tally on how many hybrids were born?”

“I fear not. That would have been impossible. The shame was too great but I swear I heard of it happening so often it must have been far more common than either species wanted to admit.”

“I just wish I knew an approximation,” Nekea muttered. “Was it in the thousands? Tens of thousands? Was it within the millions?”

“There were hundreds of thousands abandoned in the orphanages of Bajor.”

“What of the children the Cardassian men kept? If they were born looking Cardassian enough with a bit of cosmetic surgery, who would know? And how many were killed? How many died of genetic defects before they could be reported?”

“We will never know.”

“Let’s backtrack a moment,” Nekea frowned. “Why was Rilu Cuva asking you about male birth control? Does he intend to use it? Daki wants nothing more than to have children with him. Are they at odds about that?”

“He was raised more Cardassian than Bajoran. I think he was just curious, Ona.”

“What other things does he nag you about? Is he pressuring you to become a father?”

Now it was Jonas that became evasive, “He did ask why we had no children but that was all. He hasn’t nagged.”

“Goodnight, Jonas.”

She gave him a peck, turned out the light, and she fell asleep. The next morning, however, she visited her Cardassian friend. Daki Arlot didn’t bring up the sordid subject of children or anything like that. She was pleasant and spoke of her ambition to plant a garden. She praised the work of her neighbors and the speed at which they built their home. 

“Try planting fish guts as fertilizer,” Nekea advised her. “It will reek for a while, but the soil will thank you for it.”

“Do you not eat the guts?”

“Bajorans don’t waste much of anything but it’s another of their religious customs. They believe the planet has a spirit that must be placated. Not all religious customs are impractical. It’s a shame that your Bajoran never learned these things about his people. Why was he taken from his parents?”

“I don’t know. I wasn’t the one that took him from them and I wasn’t his master. I was his doctor, remember?”

“Why did they educate him if he was merely a slave?”

“I must repeat that I do not know.”

Nekea chewed her lip, “He would probably say the same thing. Anyway, I’m out of yamok sauce. Will you let me steal another bottle?”

“It’s not stealing when you ask and it is given to you!”

“Thank you, Daki.”

When she entered the kitchen area and made for the cupboards where the sauce was being kept, she almost bumped into Rilu. She found it hard to look at him the way she had before. She wondered if he knew about his mate’s proposal. Maybe he was the one that had suggested it? As much as she tried not to think about the matter, she couldn’t think of anything else. The harder she tried the more graphic the images became. She couldn’t look at the Bajoran man.

“What are you looking for, Ona?” he asked in a perfectly normal and friendly voice.

“Yamok sauce.”

“Is something amiss?”

“No, Rilu.”

“You can call me Cuva, you know.”

She shook her head, “I prefer to keep things formal between us.”

“I don’t call you Kylie and never have, but it’s not an issue for me,” he handed her the yamok sauce. 

She avoided touching his fingers as she took the bottle from him. His skin was as smooth as her husband’s. He didn’t have blonde hair and green eyes. Instead he had sandy hair and dark eyes. He wasn’t unattractive but she was uneasy in his presence. She had never sniffed for pheromones before and retreated, deciding she didn’t want to know these things. Her life was complicated enough without adding to her plate. She felt guilty no matter what she did. She believed in thought crime even if those around her didn’t.

“Rilu, have you ever thought about being with your own kind?” she asked.

“I wouldn’t know how to go about it,” he answered. “Besides, Daki is my mate. I am loyal to her.”

How loyal would he prove to be if tested?

She took the bottle to the lab instead of straight home and asked the team there to analyze the contents for her. She knew it was a strange request, but they were willing to do it for her. Then she wandered to Cara’s. 

She was glad to see that her best friend was recovering nicely. She was nursing Matthias and Caius had taken the children fishing. Nekea fetched items for the young mother around the house and helped to clean it. Children made their best effort to make the house appear as though a wind storm was sweeping through the rooms. She was rewarded when Cara allowed her to hold the newborn in her arms.

“He doesn’t seem like he’s any different than his siblings were,” she said with relief. “I think any longer with that cord wrapped around him and he might have suffered some sort of lasting damage. He came out blue, Ona!”

“The Prophets were generous,” she replied. “And Daki acted quickly.”

“This is our last baby,” Cara said with a touch of sadness.

“How does that make you feel?”

“Now that I have had time to reflect on it, I wonder if I made the right choice,” Cara admitted. “Caius thought he hid it, but I could tell he wasn’t happy about the doctor’s actions after the delivery. He’s grateful for Matthias. If we lost him, it would have been devastating, but we would have possibly had several more.”

“Cherish the children you have,” Nekea told her. 

“We will,” Cara smiled at her. “I promise.”

Nekea kissed her brow as she returned her baby and to her own home where Jonas was waiting for her. He looked angry.

“What is it?” she asked with anxiety.

“The lab called me with the results of that yamok sauce you had tested.”

“Oh,” she hadn’t expected their results so soon or that Jonas would receive them before her.

“Ona, they said there was chemicals and hormones added to it.”

“What?” she became as irate as he was. “What sort?”

“Take a look.”

He handed her a transcript and she read it with growing fury. The sauce had been tampered with so that it was the equivalent of a powerful aphrodisiac for Cardassian women and would have sabotaged any form of birth control she was taking.

“Is this some sort of prank Cardassian women play on each other?” Jonas demanded. “Was that woman trying to get you pregnant?”

“She meant well-“

“That’s sinister and twisted! How dare she try to force you to get pregnant? It’s a good thing I was using birth control myself! You might be pregnant right now if not for that! How could she do this and how could you try to downplay it?”

“Jonas, I’m far from happy! No, this is not normal behavior! I am angry, trust me! I am just saying that she didn’t do it out of malice, at least not in her eyes.”

“That woman in no longer welcome under our roof, do you hear me? She was tampering with your food and your body the way she did with Cara! At least with Cara she did it with some sort of consent! She’s a manipulator and sick! If she can’t have children, that is her tragic business. She has no right to play ‘god’ with another woman’s reproductive system! Tell her that when you return that yamok sauce!”

As Jonas was about to storm away, Nekea whispered, “Would it have been so terrible if I became pregnant?”

He stopped mid-stride and turned back to her, “Of course not! If you wanted the baby, that is one thing! If you didn’t, the consequences would be awful! If you want children, I will stop using birth control. I’d become a father. But is that what you really want, Nekea?”

She knitted her brows and took a few minutes to respond finally whispering, “No.”

“Then tell Dr. Arlot that or I will! I won’t be civil about it!”

She stared at the transcript as he stepped back into the house. Then she tore it to shreds. There was no way she could confront Daki in this state of mind. She decided to write a message and sent it to her instead. She demanded an explanation if the Cardassian woman valued their friendship. She was still having trouble accepting the reality of the situation.

“It’s almost as though she doesn’t care if the children are her own or someone else’s,” she said aloud. “She doesn’t truly want to be a mother. She just wants hybrid children born at all costs. Why? Such a thing doesn’t benefit her personally. It can't be for the sake of the colony.”

She thought of all the children that had disappeared again and her suspicion before that perhaps Daki Arlot and Rilu Cuva were not what they seemed. If she was an Obsidian agent, she was more desperate and devious than the average. She was blowing her cover.

Suddenly, she heard a buzzing sound around her and she felt a wave of heat engulf her. It wasn’t normal. Before she could cry out, she was beamed away to some other place. There were sound proof walls around her and a child was in the room with her.

“Aunt Ona!”

“Saria?” Nekea gasped. “What are you doing here?”

“I don’t know! I went to go to the bathroom in the bushes near the river and here we are!” the little girl answered. “Where is daddy?”

A metal door opened and a Cardassian man entered but it was no one she recognized. He snatched Saria as she screamed.

“Leave her alone!” Nekea shouted. “Who are you? Where are we?”

The man didn’t answer. He swung the child over his back like a sack and closed and locked the door behind him as the woman beat at it with her fists. She had a bad feeling that she was either somewhere off planet entirely or hidden deep in the wilderness where no one could find them. She was a prisoner now and she was likely about to get all the answers to the questions she had. It would do her no good. Neither would her screams.


	7. Genetic Warfare

Jonas could have sworn that his wife was standing outside their home only minutes ago, but Nekea seemed to have vanished. A cry was ringing forth from the village that another child was missing. This time, it was Saria.

“Caius!” he made every effort to find his friend and neighbor as soon as possible. “Ona is missing too!”

“Did Cara send her to come get my daughter?” the Cardassian asked hopefully.

“No! What happened to Saria? Where and when did you see her last?”

“She needed to get out of the boat to go to the bathroom. She went behind some bushes and took way longer than she should have. I sent Erik to tell her to hurry and he said she was gone. There was no sign of any struggle from an animal or otherwise. Her prints should have been left in the ground. It was near enough to the banks that it was good and muddy. What about Ona?”

“She had just discovered that Dr. Arlot had been feeding her medication trying to get her pregnant-“

“What?” Caius was shocked.

“That’s not even the worst of it! She had her suspicions that there might be Obsidian agents hidden within the population of our colony and that something secretive was underfoot. Do you think our new neighbors could be involved?”

Caius snorted, “I wouldn’t put anything past that organization! What on earth would they want with your wife and my daughter?”

“Did you know there were so many vanishings in the history of this colony and that they were all girls?”

“But no full grown women until now.”

Caius motioned for Jonas to follow him. When Cara came rushing to them screaming that she didn’t want to lose her only daughter, her husband vowed he wouldn’t let that happen while there was breath in his body. The Bajoran man and the Cardassian man got into a boat and made their way downstream. There, only accessible by boat, was the ship that Caius had used to get to the colony in the first place. Inside was his more sensitive equipment he never saw much of a need to use until now.

“This was my comrade’s ship,” he explained as he dug through it. 

“The one you murdered?” Jonas responded.

“Aye, the very one. His name was Markus and he was an intelligence officer. Cara and I were going to try to repair the ship I crashed in. If we had taken that instead of this, we might not have made it here. I never got a chance to thank him. Oh well, he is dead meat now and was a cruel man.”

“We all know more than our share of that type, don’t we?”

“I was that type, Jonas.”

“Then you may know how to best defeat them!”

“I might. You see this?” he held up an electronic device.

“What is it?”

“If those bastards are using beaming technology, which I suspect they are, this will track the residual energy and I can use it to trace back its source. We also have this ship I can pilot with some firepower on it. It’s not much, but it’s something! Go and take readings where your wife was last standing and Erik will lead you back to where my baby girl was. Then come back to me. I’ll have this ship fired up by then.”

Jonas did as instructed. Sure enough, when he waved the device within his yard, it lit up. He couldn’t read the data, but he then followed Erik to the bushes along the river bank. There were positive reactions there too.

“Did she sing?” Caius called to him when he spotted the Bajoran in the distance.

“She did.”

“Hand it here.”

The engineer worked his magic and announced, “There must be a base about sixty kilometres from here. If the Obsidian Order knows of our existence, it might be time to announce ourselves to would be allies. Central Command would probably destroy this entire colony from orbit if they knew of our existence. I’m sending out a hail to the Federation. What do you think is happening to our loved ones right now, Jonas?”

“Nothing good.”

“What did Ona imagine was happening?”

He sighed, “Probably a breeding program.” 

“Are they in danger where they are?”

“Saria probably not, but Ona is an adult like we said. Why would they take her alive? Why not simply kill her?”

“Dr. Arlot would know.”

“When I went through the village to take those readings, it was reported that they are missing too.”

Caius let out a venomous hiss, “Of course they are! That means we shouldn’t waste any time. I’ll send my message out and then you and I are going to try to get our family the hell out of there!”

Nekea had fallen into a sort of trance when she heard the door open and close. The room she was imprisoned in was plain with no furniture other than the absolute necessities. She practiced meditating like Cara tried to teach her, transporting her mind elsewhere. 

“Are you alright, Nekea?” she recognized Daki Arlot’s voice.

“Like you give a SHIT!” 

Nekea began to hiss and growl, her eyes like black flame. There was no use trying to be kind and sweet to this woman that had betrayed her and her real friends. She might as well let her true feelings about her horrible actions be known. She must already know. She had spoken her Cardassian name and only Jonas knew of that here.

“Nekea, you must have known that you couldn’t escape your duty to Cardassia. Your attempt to start fresh on this backwater planet is rather pathetic.”

“You’re an Obsidian agent, aren’t you? You and your Bajoran! He’s not even really Bajoran, is he?”

“Do you think he’s a Cardassian masquerading as another species? You think you are so terribly clever, don’t you?”

“No, I know I’m not!” Nekea said bitterly. “If I was clever I would have never befriended you!”

“Cuva is exactly what he said he is. The only thing he lied about was his profession and purpose. He is a cosmetic surgeon and I keep him because he was considered an outstanding example of his men folk. The fact that he is a good lover is a bonus for me!”

“I’m sure he would take your explanation as the highest compliment!” Nekea said sarcastically.

“For what it’s worth, my friendship with you wasn’t entirely false. Your qualities are wonderful, but I am afraid they are useless beyond making people like you. We do not get very far in life or as a species by being liked.”

“Where is Saria? What have you done to her? She’s just a little girl! Did you dissect her or mutilate her or do you have her strapped to a table undergoing some vile experiments-“

“Calm down, Nekea!” Dr. Arlot was hurt. “Do you think my order is so pointlessly cruel? Saria is with Braka and the two of them are undergoing conversion therapy. They will be given false memories and identities. Their old ones will be stripped from them. They will be reeducated as Cardassians and they will graduate from the program with cosmetic surgery. With their transformation complete, they will be given to suitable parents on Cardassia to be raised as exemplary citizens. They will marry the best Cardassian candidates and they will spread their magnificent genes into the bloodlines of as many of our people as possible!”

“How could you successfully sneak them into the mainstream population of Cardassia so easily? What parents would accept them?” Nekea asked wildly. “Our people are disgracefully racist and there are so many stipulations about adoption!”

“There are many wealthy and desperate families on our planet. I told you that infertility is on the rise. Population growth has become stagnant and yet the pressure to multiply has increased! Not only does our planet demand children but they must be perfect! They must be better than the generation that came before! And with our resources, the resources of the Obsidian Order, we can falsify whatever information required by schools, work applications, and government agencies.”

“And you think by stealing a handful of children from this colony you will somehow cause some sort of new strain of Cardassians in the overall population?” Nekea chuckled.

“Sweet Ona,” she used her Bajoran name mockingly, “Do you think this is the only place we harvest children from or that is all we do? We collect seed from the male population that can provide it. We extract and freeze eggs. It is only the very best children that we take and only the girls. That is because seed is plentiful but viable eggs and wombs are far more genetically valuable and notoriously difficult to come by! We had agents sweep through the orphanages of Bajor for specimens. Why do you think the comfort woman system was encouraged in the first place? What do you think partially motivated our invasion of Bajor in the first place? Our agents knew exactly which men to send to administer the Occupation. We studied genomes carefully and sent troops whose parentage was either shoddy or confirmed alien.”

“You are telling me that you wanted to make as many hybrids as possible? That this colony and all of Bajor was some sort of massive out of lab breeding experiment?”

“Precisely!”

“Then what do you need me for? Obsidian agents, Dissidents, I just can't escape any of you, can I? No matter where I go, I can't simply live a normal life!” Nekea cried in frustration.

“Since you refuse to accept your biological destiny, I am going to have to force it on you. I am going to take your precious eggs. I told you that you didn’t know your value as breeding stock. You are a traitor, Nekea, but with your womb, you will redeem yourself. I tried to be nice and allow you to breed with your Bajoran the natural way. You rebuked the friendly attempts and you were smart enough to spot my sabotage. I thought for certain that if I just played on your emotions and your loyalty to your friends you would totally go for the offer to become my surrogate. You managed to surprise me. Congratulations!”

“I might surprise you still!”

Dr. Arlot laughed, “I hope so! Maybe your children will be even better than Cara’s! You are a female Cardassian being paired with a male Bajoran. Do you know how incredibly rare that is? Our women despise the idea of relations with aliens! Our men have absolutely no qualms!”

“Wait!” Nekea tried something drastic. “Instead of taking all of my eggs, I’ll cooperate if you give me something in return.”

“I might humor you depending on the condition. If you agree to bear children the natural way you’ll live longer and we will get more offspring out of you. Each attempt to produce children from artificial means can fail up to five times! A Cardassian woman can bear a child every five months and more if she is capable of multiples.”

“Let Saria and Braka go. Surely I can buy at least a child or two with my body?”

Dr. Arlot considered that, frowned, and shook her head, “I will give you one child.”

Nekea hated that she had a preference, but she prayed that Saria would be released. Braka had a fragile sister but at least she had one. Saria was Cara’s only girl and she loved both the mother and child so dearly.

“Cuva!” Dr. Arlot called to him.

“Yes?”

“Have the men remove all memory of this place from Braka and release her.”

Nekea couldn’t help but groan in disappointment as he relayed the information. 

“Don’t pout!” Dr. Arlot said. “Braka is a little old for the program and upon further scrutiny isn’t as special as Saria is. Did you think I’d let both of them go or the best of them? Now to uphold your end of the bargain!”

Nekea let out a strangled gasp and hugged the corner of the room as Rilu Cuva entered the room. She squeezed her eyes shut and gritted her teeth. She curled her knees to her chin. When he took her arm gently she wanted to strike at him.

“I’m giving you an injection first,” he said softly. “Fertility drugs. They pack a bit more punch than the yamok sauce. You will feel queasy. Please hold still. I don’t want to hurt you.”

“I-I-“ language was leaving her.

He injected her and she did feel a wave of nausea. They must have been powerful and fast acting drugs. She whimpered because she felt other affects, affects she didn’t want. She refused to look at the man encroaching upon her space. His pheromones were as strong as a Cardassian man’s now.

“Nekea?” Rilu stroked her arm. “Would you prefer I call you Ona?”

“Don’t call me anything!” she found her tongue and speech. “You are not Jonas! You are not my mate!”

“This doesn’t have to be a terrible experience.”

She began to laugh hysterically at that. She was shocked at her own reaction. This didn’t seem like the time or place for laughter. The laughter turned to sobs and she began to tremble. Was that because of the drugs? They must be giving her violent mood swings on top of her erratically thumping heart and the sick feeling in the pit of her stomach.

“Get on with it, Cuva!” the doctor ordered.

“I’ll imagine someplace else,” Nekea said. “It’ll be just like my last night with Dreth…”

“Was that the name of your abusive husband?”

She nodded and waited for him to do his duty. She waited and then she kept waiting. Nothing was happening and the Bajoran man was not touching her or removing his clothes.

“What is wrong with you?” Arlot Daki demanded.

“I can’t do it,” he simply answered.

“Did you just say that you can’t?” 

His mate seemed stupefied. No doubt he had never refused his Cardassian woman anything before. He had always seemed slavish in her presence.

“I did. You have never asked me to do something like this, Daki!”

“And yet you have helped me abduct and convert children!”

“I know this woman’s husband! They hosted us in their home! If I get her with child, any child she has will be mine! And the act itself…. I just can’t do it. She’s unwilling. She isn’t you.”

“Isn’t she attractive enough? I am not only giving you my permission to treat yourself to another woman, Cuva, I am ordering it! She’s a traitor and a failure in every way as a Cardassian woman! Don’t think of her children as yours! No mother or father on Cardassia should really think of the children they bear as theirs. They really belong to the state of Cardassia! You were born for this purpose, Cuva.”

“To be a stud?”

“At least you won’t have to suffer the pregnancy or the labor!” Dr. Arlot snapped. “As the male, you get to enjoy the conception and avoid everything else! Count yourself fortunate!”

“I won’t do it.”

Rilu Cuva turned away from Nekea and exited the room. He cast a single withering glance at his mate as he walked past. The doctor looked so outraged that Nekea began to laugh again.

“Stop that!” the other woman hissed at her. “And don’t think this lets you off the hook! I can’t force Cuva and I fear I have no other Bajoran men here. I’m just going to extract your eggs like I originally planned. Tomorrow I will have to pump you full of drugs and prepare you. Do you respond better to anesthesia than other Cardassians?”

“I don’t know!” she had never needed any kind of surgery in her life!

“We’ll find out.”


	8. Wunderkind

Saria calmed down when she was placed in a room with a child she actually knew. It was a lavish playroom filled with books, games, and toys. There was classic Cardassian art and furniture decorating everything. That meant that there was a lot of triangles and dark and neutral colors. There was clearly a recording device in the room and Cardassian music being played. There was a globe and maps of Cardassia, patriotic streamers, and a severely limited computer with databases about anything and everything to do with the planet and its people.

No one had hurt her and the other girl looked unhurt. Saria wondered if she was safe after all for a moment. When the guard stepped away, though, her companion seemed apprehensive rather than happy to see another child. The guard didn’t move away very far and none of her questions had been answered.

“Braka!” she said happily. “You’re alive! Almost everyone thinks you are dead! You’ve been playing a long game of hide and seek or something?”

“You shouldn’t be speaking in Bajoran,” Braka looked terrified and spoke pure Cardassian with every word and phrase. “You will get us both in trouble!”

“Why?”

“I said stop speaking in Bajoran!”

“Fine,” Saria switched to the other tongue. “But why would we get in trouble?”

“Cardassian is what we were born to speak. Bajoran is inferior.”

“Who said that?” Saria was incensed. “All the mothers in our village speak it! My mother uses it and your mother uses it!”

“They are not our mothers anymore.”

“Braka! Your mother misses you and your father is terribly sad! They didn’t light that, uh, mourning brazier,” she remembered not to use Bajoran words. “What about your sister and your brother?”

“That isn’t my name anymore. They are going to give you a new one too.”

“Look, just because you don’t like your stupid name doesn’t mean I should have to change mine!”

“You’re stupid!” Braka insulted her. “We have no choice! Our new parents will pick our names! We’ll get new brothers and sisters too!”

“New parents? Are you crazy?”

“No, it’s our original parents that are crazy. Our fathers are traitors and our mothers are not worthy of us. We are going back to Cardassia where we belong.”

“I don’t want new parents!” Saria’s face screwed up in distress. “I don’t want to go back to Cardassia! I was born here in Had’lenga so I can’t ‘go back’ there! I don’t like this place! I want my twin and my baby brothers! Do you know where they took Aunt Ona?”

Braka looked puzzled, “They only bring kids like us here.”

“What are we like?”

“We are Cardassians, the real Cardassians of our village.”

“We are hybrids!”

“They are going to fix us!”

“Fix us how? We aren’t broken! Don’t you miss your mother and father? How could you say these things, Braka? How come I am special but Erik isn’t?”

“He’s a dirty rotten boy. Worse, he’s half Bajoran and he can’t be fixed.”

“Don’t you dare say that about my brother or I will hurt you!”

“They are the ones that are going to hurt you if you don’t agree with me.”

“Who are ‘they’?”

“Our caregivers and teachers until we graduate.”

“Are you telling me this is some sort of creepy boarding school? How long do we have to stay here? Is there any way to leave?”

“They said it usually takes a period of ninety days. It can be longer if you are bad and resist.”

“What does that mean?” Saria didn’t like that threat. “What do they do if you are naughty?”

Braka sighed, “I’ll have to show you. This is why I can’t speak Bajoran.”

The older girl sat to meditate and began a chant to the Prophets. After merely a few moments, she began to scream in pain for no reason. Saria’s eyes bulged and she clutched her fine black hair. 

“Stop! Stop!” she cried. “What is happening? Make it stop!”

“I can make it stop,” Braka ceased the chant and spoke Cardassian again.

The moment the child stopped the chant and got out of her meditative position, she looked visibly relieved instead of in agony. Saria was astonished and confused again.

“Oh, I forgot to say you can’t pray anymore. No mention of You-Know-Who either.”

“Are you alright?” Saria asked with concern.

“Fine now. More than fine.”

“What made you scream like that?”

The girl tapped at her temple, “They gave me something that they call an implant. It makes me hurt all over when I’m bad. When I speak Cardassian or do something else they like, I get good feels.”

“I’m not going to let them do that to me!” Saria insisted.

Braka shrugged, “You aren’t going to have a choice. It’s a good thing your birth givers taught you to speak Cardassian well. Did they also teach you to write it?”

“My daddy did. Don’t call him or my mommy ‘birth givers’!”

“Then all of this will be much easier on you. They are trying to make my memory as sharp as a proper Cardassian’s. That is much harder than learning to read and write.”

“We have to get out of here!”

“I shouldn’t play or talk to you until you start going through the training!”

Braka folded her arms and turned her back to Saria. Then she got out a Cardassian doll and began to play on her own. Saria stomped her foot.

“I’m not going to let them change me!” she said with determination and in Bajoran. “They can hurt me all they want! I will never forget or stop loving my mommy and daddy!”

“They are going to hurt you!” Braka sang. “They are going to hurt you real bad.”

“I’ll fight them! I’ll escape from this place!”

“There is no escape! If you escape, they’ll kill your beloved mommy and daddy! They told me that’s what they would do if I tried to escape!”

Saria was even more horrified than before at those words and called to the guard but he ignored her. Hours went by and Saria tried to contact anyone using the computer. Of course it was little more than a glorified gaming console. She looked around for vents. They were too small for her to squeeze through and grated with bars. 

She grew bored and frustrated looking for escape and took a book from the shelf. She realized that all the books were in Cardassian with very few pictures. She was too young to spot the tell tale signs, but they were stuffed full of propaganda.  
A few hours later, though, a different Cardassian man came to the door. He motioned to Braka.

“You are going home,” he told her. “Come with me.”

“I’m graduating already?” the child sounded terrified. “But they said I’m not nearly ready!”

“You’re not going to remember anything I tell you anyway. Just do as you are told!” the man said impatiently. 

When Saria tried to follow, she was shoved backward. The questions she repeated were ignored again. Now she was alone in this room. She had never truly been alone all her life. There was always a sibling or a fellow villager nearby. She didn’t like it.

“I feel sick!” she announced to the guard.

“Lie down and be quiet then.”

She realized he wasn’t falling for a little bit of belly aching. She shoved a finger down her throat to induce vomiting. When the guard saw that for himself he had no choice but to take her to the medical quarters. A nurse was there since Dr. Arlot was occupied.

“You needed to come here soon anyway,” the nurse said. “I have to weigh, measure, and make a note of every milometer of your body. Show me your birthmarks first.”

“Do you really have to film me?” the little girl shoved the optic device away.

“I suppose not this time but I will have to take photographs.”

While the nurse was fiddling with the device, Saria snatched a scalpel from her station and hid it within the toy the guard had allowed her to carry for comfort. Then she cooperated with the examination, instinctively putting up a front that she wouldn’t be a problem child.

“You have such pretty eyes!” the nurse praised her. “So blue they are almost violet! At least we won’t have to change your eye or hair color!”

“What are you going to change?”

“That’s not my jurisdiction.”

“What?”

“I keep forgetting my subjects are children. I mean I am not the one in charge of cosmetics. The guard said you vomited. What else do you feel?”

“Scared.”

“I am not talking about your emotions.”

“My stomach hurts.”

“Is that all?”

“I think I have a fever.”

The nurse waved a medical device over the child and found nothing out of the ordinary. She made her take anti-nausea medication. She put a thermometer under her tongue too.

“Do I get a treat?” Saria asked.

“Don’t talk with a thermometer in your mouth!”

“I’m sorry!”

Saria bumped the table nearby causing supplies to spill all over the place. The nurse grumbled and crouched to gather them up. While she was distracted, the child shoved the edge of the thermometer up close to the nearby lamp. She checked the temperature, waving it a little to try to get the temperature she realistically wanted. When the nurse finished and turned back to her she made sure to pop it back into her mouth at the proper time.

“You do have a fever,” the nurse confirmed it. “They said you shouldn’t be affected by the temperature of the environment. We may have to delay the start of your training until that goes down at the least.”

“Do I get a treat?” Saria refrained.

“You are sick so I shouldn’t.”

“I need nourishment to get better.”

The nurse couldn’t help but smile, “You are a clever child, aren’t you?”

She produced a pastry that looked a little familiar to Saria. It was filled with a fruit filling she wasn’t so familiar with. At least it was delicious.

“May I have more of whatever that was?”

“It’s an ikri bun. You will get plenty more of that on Cardassia.”

Suddenly Saria was not interested in eating such a thing anymore.


	9. Subterfuge

It took a great deal of convincing, but Jonas had no choice but to go along with his companion's insane attempt at a sound plan. The only reason he was willing to risk it was because they had no idea what was being done to Nekea as they argued about it. There were far too many unknowns. They had no idea if the base was weaponized or a simple lab peppered with a small number of true agents or soldiers. It could be a fortress and a suicide mission attempting anything but subterfuge. They were mostly waiting for the Federation to show up. 

“If there’s anything the Obsidian Order wishes to avoid, it is exposing themselves and their work,” Caius told him. “It would be bad enough if Central Command got wind of what they are doing here but aliens? Aliens that they just fought skirmishes with? Now hold still!”

“This isn’t going to work!” Jonas said in a panic.

“Not with that attitude it won’t!”

Caius took a pair of scissors and chopped off most of the Bajoran’s golden mane in a single smooth motion. Jonas wanted to cry because his hair was his pride and joy. The Cardassian overseer that scarred his back didn’t care about his hair. But Caius wasn’t but half finished yet. He buzzed his hair incredibly short and dyed it so red it was barely a natural color. He shaved his stylized whiskers to reveal the smooth chin concealed beneath. 

“What is that?” Jonas asked when the Cardassian produced a tiny bottle of black dye.

“It’s for your eyes. Keep them open and tilt your head.”

“Dye for my eyes?” Jonas winced.

“If we are going to convince them you are an entirely different man, you must look the part.”

“Is that stuff going to blind me?”

“It isn’t going to feel soothing, I’ll tell you that! You should still be able to make out shapes.”

Jonas reminded himself he was doing this for his wife and tilted his head, keeping his eyes pried open with his fingers so that Caius could use the eye dropper. As soon as the dye hit his eyeball, it stung more terribly than he could remember his eye stinging before for anything. He wanted to squeeze it shut, but Caius kept it pried open.

“Don’t you dare blink! Give it a few minutes. Then I must do this again for the other eye.”

“It feels like sandpaper!”

“I know! It will pass!”

Jonas gnashed his teeth and most of the irritation subsided but the world looked black and inky. He braced himself better for the other eye and had to resist the urge to rub them.

“Whatever you do, don’t scratch!” Caius shouted.

“Yeah, yeah, yeah! In the name of the Prophets, is there battery acid in that bottle?”

“You think I know?”

Whatever it was, the dye managed to change his jade green eyes temporarily to a muddy brown color. Caius threw an ugly sack of rags at him to wear.

“Your name is Tan Howe. You were a terrorist condemned to die by mining radioactive material but never actually got there.”

“Why don’t you say it was a copper mine instead? Sprinkle some truth into your lies.”

Caius smiled grimly, “Ah, can you give me the name of the mine you were sent to then? Make my lie better?”

Jonas nodded.

By the time they approached the air space of the base they knew was hidden underground somewhere, Jonas had been transformed as much as they could manage without a surgeon. He baked under a light to make his skin darker than his natural hue. Caius sent out a radio wave to ping the sensors of whatever security was nearby. Within seconds, he was hailed.

“State your orders and purpose here,” said a voice in Cardassian.

“I am Glinn Markus Saskon,” Caius lied so well Jonas began to look at him differently. “I have a specimen to give over to this facility.”

“Confirm your identity.”

Caius confidently prattled off his former comrade’s codes as well as their shared commander and unit. None of it was false.

“Soldier, it appears that you and your ship were listed as MIA for years and your codes are out of date.”

“That’s because my missions became classified as I am a liaison and I have not received updated codes due to the sensitivity of the Occupation.”

He prayed that this base was full of eggheads only and was being run by the pair of agents without the staff’s knowledge. If so, they wouldn’t be nearly as critical of his show. Nearly all security personnel would habitually claim a person had outdated codes or wrong information just to see if they could spot a bluff, regardless if there was really one. It was merely a test to ferret out poor liars and idiots. Luckily his suspicions were proven right.

“Who gave you the orders to bring us a specimen and what is its nature?”

Caius shoved Jonas before the screen to give them a visual if they demanded it, “I was ordered to bring a perfect Bajoran male and it is not in my job description to ask why and whom for.”

“Did I just hear something about a Bajoran male specimen?” a different man chimed in.

Caius felt his blood in his veins nearly freeze and his eyes became hard. Jonas could barely breathe. They recognized Rilu’s voice. He may not be able to recognize Jonas but he would certainly recognize Ciaus. 

“Give me full audio and visual this instant.”

Jonas almost cursed and Caius was tempted to reach for the weapon console but Rilu showed no hint of recognition. Surely with his Cardassian trained memory and mind he had to know that the Cardassian before him was not Markus? 

“May we scan and search your ship?” Rilu fixed his gaze on Caius with perfect control and no emotion.

“Naturally. I would like to announce that there is basic weaponry equipped.”

“Naturally.”

“The scans reveal nothing out of the ordinary.”

“A full search isn’t necessary then. Our facility is also sensitive. You cannot be granted permission to land or enter. We will beam down the specimen.”

“Very well,” Caius refused to let his reluctance show.

“I trust that I will see you again very soon, Glinn Saskon?”

“You will. That is a promise.”

“Carry on, soldier.”

Jonas was beamed away and taken into Rilu’s custody. He said no word to him and led him through long and winding hallways that Jonas couldn’t see anyway due to his compromised eyes. His world was black shapes moving erratically. His ears were sharpened and he heard constant humming and droning of hidden devices. There were no footsteps but their own and certainly no voices. 

Rilu stopped him before a wall and tapped a barely distinguishable groove and a hidden door opened. Jonas could only tell because he heard it and then a familiar voice that sounded frightened.

“Is it time for Daki to take my eggs?”

“No. There is suddenly a much better option available.”

“Who the hell is that?”

“Your new breeding partner.”

“So you found someone else willing to ravish me?”

“Give it a chance, Nekea. You might like this one.”

Rilu gave each of them an injection of drugs. When he shoved Jonas inside the room she could have sworn the other man smiled.

“Get her with an entire litter of babies, you lucky animal!”

The door snapped shut and Nekea stared at her roommate. There was something familiar about him but she was dreading contact of any kind. He smiled at her and reached to touch her hair and she hissed and became defensive.

“What did they promise you in order to convince you to do this?” she cried. “Your freedom or simply borrowed time? Or are you motivated to humiliate a Cardassian woman instead of a Bajoran one for a change?”

“I can’t see you very well.”

She narrowed her eyes and allowed herself a glimmer of hope at the sound of his voice. He turned his back to her and removed the rags from his torso. Her lips parted and her eyes lit up when she saw his scars. They knew they had to pretend not to know each other. They were being monitored.

“Come here, stranger,” she sounded resentful but was bursting with happiness. 

“I decided I was curious and didn’t want to die in a mine, you see,” Jonas obeyed.

She cupped his face, “Your hair. I suppose it’s not a bad look.”

“I like what little I can see.”

“Really?” she sounded cynical. “What could you possibly like about a spoon head?”

“Your eyes,” he closed them. “They look more like mine.”

“What else do you like?” the drugs were making it impossible to suppress herself.

“Your lips,” he touched them lightly.

“Mhm. What else?” she whispered.

“My favorite part,” he cupped her breasts, “is that these are just the right size for me!”

“Your skin is appetizing,” she couldn’t stop grinning now.

“So is your neck.”

He nibbled her throat with just the exact amount of ferociousness she loved. She moaned and clutched the back of his head since she couldn’t grab his sheared mane.

“It’s almost like you know me, stranger!” she giggled. “Going for my spot like that!”

“Maybe its instinct and not all aliens are ugly and unappealing.”

“What should I call you?”

“Howe. I heard them call you Nekea.”

“I prefer Ona.”

She kissed Jonas and let him push her onto the small mattress. She spread her legs and invited him. She had been without her birth control but they didn’t know Jonas was still protected. They wanted her to mate so let them see she was mating. It was her husband, but for reasons of his own, Rilu Cuva seemed to be playing along.

As Caius was drifting above, he received a private message in his ship. It read: Your daughter is safe for now. Nekea and Jonas will be safe for as long as I can manage. Wait until you have reinforcements.


	10. Allies

“Erik, are you not hungry?” Cara asked her son.

“No,” he was staring at his plate.

“That is alright, I suppose. Your brother is always more than happy to help himself to our food. You ate next to nothing last night.”

“I miss my sister,” Erik gazed longingly at her empty chair.

“Your father will get her back!”

“What if he doesn’t come back either? What if these bad people take my little brothers too? Why didn’t they take me instead of Saria?”

“I don’t know but my best guess is because you are a boy. They have been taking the girls like Braka and probably Anket the year you and your sister were born.”

“But why!” Erik cried wildly. “We are supposed to protect our womenfolk!”

“If they had taken the boys instead it would be Saria screaming that we should protect our men.”

“We are twins! We are two halves of the same person. It doesn’t matter that she is a girl and I am a boy. We were born together and we want to die together.”

“Erik, if you died together that would make the rest of us very sad. Twins don’t die the same day unless by some tragic circumstance.”

“As long as I am with her, I don’t care. I love my sister. I hate being separated from her.”

“Think of your brothers.”

“Tomen isn’t my twin and I barely know Matthias. He’s just a baby. He can’t talk to me. He can’t skip stones in the river with me. He can’t…”

Erik fled from the table because he was getting himself worked up. Cara didn’t mind that he didn’t bother to push his chair back. His emotional outburst was to be expected. She didn’t know how she held herself together but she had to do it for the family’s sake.

Tomen and Matthias were so young they were blissfully unaware of much. Occasionally the toddler would say his sister’s name and look around for her. The baby was cluster feeding and napping as he pleased. Over a day had gone by and Cara was growing more concerned.

She heard a knock on her door and found a little girl in her doorway. She hoped that it was Saria, but it was Braka! The little girl seemed terribly lost and confused. She was speaking Cardassian and when Cara greeted her with a Bajoran gesture the girl began screaming.

“Braka?”

“That’s not my name!”

“Where have you been? Why aren’t you going straight home?”

“I don’t know where I am! I don’t know my name. Don’t speak those words!”

“What words?”

The child covered her ears and shook her head. Erik and Tomen sprang into the yard, alerted by the commotion. Erik went to hug his neighbor and playmate and she shoved him away.

“Don’t’ touch me, filthy hybrid!”

“Braka, what is wrong with you? Do you know where Saria is?” Erik’s elation turned to confusion.

“I don’t know any of you!”

“Boys, go back inside! I need to take this poor girl back to her parents this instant! She is not well!” Cara told them.

“Leave me alone!”

Cara realized that the girl wasn’t speaking a single word or phrase of Bajoran and switched to Cardassian effortlessly unlike Braka’s own mother, “Child, you will obey your elders and come with me. I will take you where you belong and to the people that know you.”

The child became much more compliant immediately. Cara led her to her house and called out to its occupants. She clarified that the father should step out first. She had a feeling that if Braka caught sight of the mother that was Bajoran and despised speaking Cardassian more than required, the girl might flee in fear.

“Braka?” the father dropped to his knees and stretched out his arms. “My daughter! Come to your father!”

“Father?” the girl looked uncertain.

“Yes, it’s your father!”

“Do you sing to her?” Cara asked.

“Singing is for women.”

“All Cardassians sing the anthem of Cardassia. Do it!”

He gave Cara a quizzical look, but he began to hum and then sing. The girl took a step toward him and then another. Each step was less reluctant than the last. The anthem had certainly been hammered into her brain and her father’s voice must be jarring her mind back home. When she came close enough, her father scooped her in his arms and acted as though he wouldn’t let go.

“Don’t call your wife just yet!” Cara told him and then entered the house to speak to her.

“My daughter has come home?” the woman was rapturous with joy. 

“Yes, but I fear that the men and women that took her may have conditioned her.”

“Conditioned her to do what? What did they do to my baby?” the mother was furious.

“Don’t speak Bajoran around her for a period of time. You must have anyone that comes into contact with her adhere to that rule.”

“Why?”

“She has an aversion to it.”

“An aversion to her mother tongue? How is that possible?”

Cara had her theories but she didn’t want to tell this woman the grisly details of the Obsidian Order just yet. She didn’t know what had been done to Braka herself.

“She may be afraid of you.”

“Her own mother?” 

“I just want you to be prepared. She may reject you until the trauma has passed.”

“But I am her mother!”

Before Cara could stop her, she went to confront her child. When Braka saw the Bajoran woman she glared at her. She clutched her father tighter. He tried to hand her to the mother and the girl began screaming again.

“Braka, it’s me!” the woman looked heartbroken.

“I don’t know you. You are a Bajoran comfort woman.”

The mother’s face changed and became stony and she made a fist at her side, “I was a comfort woman long ago. I am not that anymore. Your father rescued me from a terrible man. Do you not remember your little sister and brothers either?”

The girl looked at her father with a little less trust and Cara asked, “Where did you come from? Who left you here? Why did they let you go? Can you lead us there?”

“I don’t remember anything. I woke up at the border of the village. I walked up to the first house I saw that looked like it had people in it hoping it was my mother and father.”

“You are home now!” her father told her. “And your real memories will return. I promise things will get better.”

“It may take time,” Cara warned. “Have patience, I beg you.”

“Did Saria come back too?”

She bit her lip, “No.”

“Maybe she will. Maybe she is wandering around looking for you.”

Cara wished with all her might that was the case. Instead, they all looked up as they heard spacecraft above them. It was a Federation ship and Cara’s stomach clenched. Someone must have summoned them here but would they help or not? They might even worsen the situation. 

The elders and half the adult villagers gathered at the community center. A representative of Starfleet was welcomed as lavishly as they could muster in such a short time and with their limited resources. The officer was well groomed and seemed friendly enough. The colony had very little experience dealing with Federation members. The few that did were Cardassians and it was no accident that none of them attended, sending their Bajoran wives or their children instead. Cardassia and the Federation had a tenuous peace at that present time but a recent history of border wars was fresh.

“I am a liaison officer of our ambassador,” the man told them. “My name is Lt. Jonathan Scherer. I understand that this colony wished to invoke the aid of the Federation?”

“We did!” Cara realized her husband must have done this.

“What exactly do you call this place and who are you people?” his eyes became a little less friendly. “Are you all Bajoran? Some of you look a little more Cardassian.”

“We call this place Had’lenga,” one of the elders, a third generation and so mixed his Cardassian features were all but diminished said. “Our population consists of refugees from both Bajor and Cardassia.”

“Refugees? Well, that might be said of the Bajorans. What of the Cardassians?”

“What of them?”

“How many of them are war criminals seeking to escape justice?” Lt. Scherer asked bluntly. 

Cara and the rest had been afraid of just such a question. How were they to explain this in a way that the Federation could understand? They had made contact with Cardassia and Bajor quite late into the Occupation. They couldn’t possibly understand the nuances of their community and the individual stories and circumstances that led to each Cardassian man being there.

“Most of the pure Cardassian men here are Dissidents,” the elders attempted to explain. 

“Dissidents and labeled traitors by the leaders of Cardassia and Central Command. Are you trying to tell me none of them took up arms against Bajor during the Occupation or against the Federation during the Border Wars?”

“You said during the Occupation,” Cara was quick to pick up on that. “What is the news of the Occupation? Nekea and Jonas arrived here two years ago and it still sounded terrible.”

“I have good news for your Bajoran population,” the liaison officer smiled at her. “The Occupation is over! Cardassia pulled out of Bajor and its population is under the protection of the Federation.”

“Really?” Cara’s mouth gaped open.

Everyone present began to hug and kiss one another in celebration. The Federation officer looked on with a neutral expression. Did he think half of the audience would grumble with disappointment at that? Did he really think that the Cardassian men were all still covert or blatant supporters of racism, imperialism, and crimes against humanity?

“If that is the case, what does it matter if much of our populace is Cardassians?” Cara asked uneasily. “What is happening on our old home worlds? Do you plan to drag our men away in chains to labor camps or execute them on the spot? The men here are fathers, grandfathers, and every one of them is a valued and loved member of Had’lenga!”

All of the women and children began to buzz about that. It was true that some of them might have mixed feelings about the pasts of their Cardassian husbands and fathers. They had all agreed that all of that was to be put aside so that their colony could be a utopia for hybrids and pure bloods alike! The elders desperately tried to show that by pointing out the hybrids in the crowd. 

“My husband was a Dissident from the very beginning!” a woman cried with tears in her eyes. “He was tortured and interrogated brutally and threatened with execution! The only crime he committed was refusing to fire upon women and children and for falling in love with his comfort woman! When they assigned me to him he freed me!”

“My father was a soldier until my mother became pregnant with me!” a hybrid teenager told him. “She died bearing me because he couldn’t risk calling a midwife or doctor. He grieved for her and kept my birth a terrible secret and hid me as long as he could. A servant finally found me and reported him. His superiors demanded my death. He chose to flee here instead. He is a good man! I won’t let you take him away!”

“Calm down, calm down!” the Federation officer held up his palms. “An accord was reached and if the Federation tried to hunt down every single Cardassian involved in the Occupation or the Border Wars, we couldn’t possibly keep it. My goal is not to hunt down Cardassians. The Federation is always willing to grant protection to colonies such as yours. You are within neutral space but closer to Federation territory. If you wish to bring me men that you know are war criminals, I will take them, of course, but Bajor is applying for admittance. You certainly can too.”

“That would be wise,” one of their elders said right away. “Do my peers agree?”

They unanimously agreed as long as they were assured that no Cardassian would be prosecuted and no Bajoran either for some sort of act of terrorism. The Federation didn’t approve of groups like the Kohn-Ma any more than Cardassian criminals. At least those of mixed races weren’t looked at as abominations or held in such suspicion as their fathers.

“Lt. Scherer,” Cara said, “we think there is an Obsidian Order presence here but they are not in any way associated with our colony.”

The liaison officer lowered his voice, “What evidence do you have of that?”

“Children have been going missing. One of them just returned today displaying symptoms of mind control,” Cara answered. “My daughter is gone! My best friend, a Cardassian woman named Ona, is also gone! She gathered plenty of evidence if you will follow me and promise to help!”

“I will look at this evidence and see what we can do. If there is shady activity going on here, it might be in the Federations best interest to pursue it.”


	11. Epilogue

“Cuva, where in the name of Cardassia did that other Bajoran come from? I spent hours setting up the medical quarters to extract the woman’s eggs only to discover that thing!”

“I took it upon myself to find a suitable breeding partner for the subject,” he answered casually. “I know I failed you, Daki, and you said yourself that the natural method would yield far better and plentiful results for the program.”

Dr. Arlot wasn’t easy to fool and couldn’t help but look at her Bajoran lover with a little bit more than suspicion. Of course, he was prepared for that. He would have been more worried if she accepted his explanation without question.

“Nekea told me that she couldn’t stand the idea of being unfaithful to her husband. I was shocked she didn’t fight you tooth and nail the moment you entered the room with her. Why is she being so cooperative all of the sudden?”

“I put enough drugs into both their systems that she would probably find a carrot irresistible and many men act upon their urges at any and every opportunity. I think the threat of death motivated their survival and reproductive instincts and added flame to the fire. Do you wish to see for yourself the proof of them engaging?”

Daki Arlot allowed herself to laugh wickedly at the vulgarity of his statement and the deadpan way in which he delivered it. Sometimes she also allowed herself to be affectionate with Rilu Cuva as well. She gave him a tender kiss.

“Not necessary. We’ll give the female a blood test as soon as possible and remove the male once she proves pregnant. Then we will keep them apart until she has delivered and repeat the cycle. Now I need to decide if I should extract a few eggs and freeze them just to be on the safe side later.”

“What of the child?” he asked, kissing her back.

“Saria is perfect! The nurse informed me she was too sick to begin the therapy. Cara told me her twins had never been sick in their lives. I gave her a physical and mental examination. It was obvious to me that she had faked illness and she was trying to play stupid when I gave her intelligence tests. It will take longer to curb her attitude but it will be worth the effort. Not only might she provide excellent offspring like herself but she might prove a candidate for the Order! She has a beautiful spirit but we will have to break it a little.”

“You might want to replace the nurse that declared her sick,” Cuva sported a cruel smile. “What good is a nurse that is fooled so easily by a child?”

Daki groaned, “Unfortunately I need this nurse because she is compassionate. The people the Order sent me before resented this assignment and either had no clue how to handle children or hated them for their Bajoran natures. They would push the children too far punishing them for personal reasons and not for conversion purposes. The last nurse accidentally killed that girl we had a few years ago.”

“You mean Anket?”

“Good to see that your mental conditioning was effective. I bet most Bajorans would have forgotten her name. Cardassia has you to thank for perfecting the conversion therapy. You proved that if a full blooded Bajoran could become a loyalist surely hybrids could be fixed! Now that Central Command has decided to abandon Bajor, it’s more important than ever that we provide subjects.”

“Daki, if you could carry my children would you place them in the program without hesitation?”

“Of course! I’m surprised you have to ask that! I would engineer the children to grow up faster if I could. They eat and drink like livestock and yet give nothing back until puberty.”

“We were children once.”

“We grew up faster than others.”

“Some might say that we were robbed.”

“Of what?”

“A childhood.”

Daki snickered to express what she thought of that, “Don’t you feel the least bit sorry that you couldn’t be in there with Nekea?”

“Why? Am I really missing out on something? I have a Cardassian woman in my lap right now.”

“Cuva, you are a man! All men at least fantasize about other women! “

“Fantasy is not reality. It also harms no one as long as they can distinguish between the two.”

“Were you afraid you were going to harm her or hurt me?”

“I know you are made of sterner stuff.”

Daki paused as though she were searching for some hidden meaning in his words. She had known this man longer than anyone in her life and finally decided to take his word.

Caius was fiddling with the systems of his ship trying to think of ways to beef up his shields and firepower when he was hailed. When he saw a human male instead of a Bajoran or Cardassian face he smiled.

“It’s about time the Federation showed up!”

“Your wife informed us that if we found you we would find this Obsidian Order base.”

“Yes, but there are now three hostages in there.”

“The Federation prides itself on hard negotiations and diplomacy, Cardassian. Watch and learn.”

He was able to hear the conversation between the base and the officer but not see a visual.

“We would like to inform your presence here, Cardassians, is a violation of the Jankata Accord!” the Federation announced. “As of a few hours ago the colony known as Had’lenga has been accepted under the blanket protection of the Federation. We demand that all operations cease and whatever hostages you have be surrendered.”

“We are scientists merely studying unknown flora and fauna on this planet,” came the startled reply.

“The colonists have reported missing citizens and they have been traced directly to this base that you were hiding from the native population. Furthermore, the inhabitants are hybrids and Dissidents as well as Bajorans that your government would label terrorists. Who is the commander here?”

Daki Arlot’s voice made Caius’s blood boil, “I suppose that I am.”

“We know for a fact that you have three prisoners so there is no use trying to deny it: Drill Saria aged seven years old and a hybrid, a woman named Nekea Tarsus with the alias Kylie Ona of twenty-four years and a Cardassian, and lastly Kylie Jonas aged twenty-five years and a Bajoran. Hand them over and you will be allowed to leave peacefully and will be shown clemency.”

“You have false information. We have only two of those subjects here,” Dr. Arlot sounded furious.

“No, Daki, he is correct,” Rilu confessed. “The Bajoran using the name Tan Howe is in fact Kylie Jonas.”

“You betrayed us?” she responded in a cold voice.

“The Federation was not contacted by anyone in the base,” the officer corrected. “It was a father seeking his stolen daughter.”

“If I surrender them I demand that we be allowed to return to Cardassia without interrogation.”

“Impossible. In light of your actions your people will do far worse than anything the Federation would do to you.”

“And what sort of conditions will we suffer if we refuse? What if I murder my charges? I don’t really need the Bajoran!”

“Well, you could chance a war between the Cardassian Union and the Federation.”

“Daki,” Rilu pleaded, “simply release the subjects. Cardassia can’t afford this.”

“What if I release the child and the Bajoran? Nekea is a citizen of Cardassia!”

“She is a Dissident.”

Caius laughed aloud at that because Nekea had never truly been that either. She was simply a woman that had always been in the wrong place and at the wrong time. That was painfully clear now that he finally knew all about her and Jonas.

“I will release them if you allow us to take our research that harms no one and leave with it. That means Rilu Cuva and I along with biological samples we have collected from the colony over the years,” D. Alrot kept trying to negotiate some sort of escape.

“If it is of the colony it remains in the colony,” the officer said firmly. “That covers the hostages and the research, I suspect.”

He heard the Cardassian woman cry out in frustration, “This research is beneficial to Cardassia and isn’t related to warfare at all!”

“But it is people you have sampled from, isn’t it? Don’t try to deny that either. We are aware of the exact nature of your biological research. It isn’t of the pretty flowers or the insects. You took those without consent. Your Union isn’t entitled to that sort of thing.”

“I will beam over the hostages but let us have the research and allow me to leave! You can keep the samples but not the research!”

“We will take those hostages. Perhaps we can negotiate finer details of what you are allowed to keep later when you are questioned.”

Caius heard a slight scuffle and was worried for a moment and Rilu said, “The three hostages have been beamed aboard your ship, officer.”

“I can’t allow myself to be taken alive!” Dr. Arlot shouted.

“Daki, please don’t!”

“I should probably take you with me, but I won’t. I hope you enjoy your freedom, Cuva. I sincerely mean that. You know I must do my duty to Cardassia.”

They heard the firing of a weapon and then Rilu’s monotone voice, “Dr. Daki Arlot has taken her life. I am now in command of this base. We will give in to your demands.”

“Are you sure she is dead?” the Federation officer sounded shocked and horrified. “Why would she overreact like that? She wasn’t going to be tortured!”

Once again, Caius scoffed at the Federation’s naivety. 

“She was an Obsidian agent,” Rilu answered. “They can never allow themselves to be captured and interrogated. They take their secrets to their grave. You do not want to know what they do to their own when they become careless enough to expose themselves. They will erase all evidence that this woman existed. Daki Arlot wasn’t even her real name. That will go to her grave too. I am not an agent and neither is the skeleton crew we have here. They really are just scientists, a handful of guards, and a single nurse. I doubt the breeding program is active elsewhere since the Occupation is ended. If we return to Cardassia we will not be welcomed. We resign ourselves to your custody.”

The Federation ship prepared to land to start the process of rounding up the occupants of the base and to gather evidence and begin an investigation. The ambassador’s liaison officer hailed Caius.

“I take it you would like to see your daughter and fellow colonists?” he asked. 

“I want nothing more in the universe at this moment.”

“I will beam them to you. I am amazed you managed to remain here quiet as long as you did.”

“Patience wasn’t my strong suit but becoming a father has made me far less reckless.”

“I understand. I am a father too. Here come your loved ones.”

Nekea and Jonas looked queasy and half delirious when they appeared in his ship but they were alive and well. His daughter immediately sprang to catch herself around her father’s neck. She was sobbing and crying with happiness.

“Daddy, daddy, I want to go home! That place was scary, especially that doctor! I want my mother and brothers! Erik can’t sleep without me beside him at night!”

“My little moonbeam!” Caius clasped her close and couldn’t contain tears either. “We’re going home right now!”

“You helped rescue me, didn’t you, daddy?”

“I did.”

“Daddy,” the girl pouted adorably, “I never want to go fishing again!”

He laughed and turned to the couple. “Are you alright?”

“If any of us needed medical assistance they would have kept us on that starship,” Jonas sighed. “We are just exhausted.”

“Oh, Ona, in case you didn’t know we are all going to be Federation citizens soon.”

“Really? I suppose that is good news,” she brushed her long waves out of her face; it had become so tangled and messy. “My real name is Nekea by the way.” 

A few months later Had’lenga was enjoying a bountiful harvest. The Federation had given them farming equipment that made the work less back breaking and yielded better quality rice. They occasionally got drop supplies of meat and other packaged and dried goods. More mixed couples and hybrids were arriving day by day when the news became more public that a sort of utopia for them existed and was free of the fear of being exposed to enemies. 

Nekea kept close to Cara, avoiding the new faces as much as possible. Saria made a special point to play with Braka who was slowly but surely starting to speak Bajoran again and hugging and kissing her mother and siblings. Children could bounce back from trauma as long as they had a stable and loving home. It helped that she didn’t remember most of what had happened to her. Saria had managed to avoid starting the conversion therapy at all. 

“You know Rilu told me in private about what you did before they took him back to Bajor?” Cara asked her in a low voice as everyone else was dancing, drinking, and merrymaking.

“What exactly? A lot happened in the short amount of time I was taken captive.”

“He said that you tried to bargain for both Braka’s and Saria’s freedom.”

“Oh,” Nekea flushed pale gray. “I-“

“Neither of those girls is yours by blood, but you were willing to sacrifice yourself for them. You have decided not to be a mother, but I think if you allowed yourself to do so, you would be an amazing mother any child would be lucky to have. Thank you so much for caring for my daughter so much. If things hadn’t gone the way they did you managed to save Braka at the very least.”

“Well,” she felt put on the spot, “Cara, you are my Bajoran sister and your children call me aunt. I am content to be their crazy Cardassian aunt.”

She laughed, “And Jonas is their strange Bajoran uncle. You know there’s no danger of your children being snatched for some dark purpose anymore, right? Daki told you that you would have no problem conceiving and carrying children. I don’t mean to aggravate you; I’m just reminding you that you can always change your mind.”

“Duly noted.”

“I think Jonas should keep his hair the length it is now. It’s not too short or long. He looked almost unrecognizable when it was short and his whiskers gone!”

“It almost was like he was a different man that day for certain!” Nekea giggled.

Jonas saw her and Cara whispering and walked over to them. He gave his wife a kiss and a mischievous glint was in his eye.

“I have a gift for you! I won’t be mad if you don’t like it.”

“What is it?”

He produced a bottle of yamok sauce.

“Jonas!” she shouted. “Get that stuff away from me! Throw it into the river! That’s not funny!”

“I’m sorry, I couldn’t help it!” he chortled.

“I thought you loved the stuff, Nekea?” Caius was puzzled.

“Not anymore.”

“Why?”

“Please don’t ask me that!” she groaned.

The couples sat together on blankets as a fireworks display began. Cara rocked the baby, Caius held Tomen, Erik was atop jonas’ shoulders and Saria was in Nekea’s lap.

“Have you ever thought of returning to Bajor, Cara?” 

“Hell no! Had’lenga is my home. Have you ever thought of returning to Cardassia? Unlike the rest of us, you still had family to go home to. With the Occupation over maybe they wouldn’t mind Jonas so much? You have no children to worry about.”

Nekea shook her head, “Why would I leave our little utopia? I think I’m finally happy here. We are exactly where we belong.”

**Author's Note:**

> "Here with Me" by Dido
> 
> I didn't hear you leave  
> I wonder how am I still here  
> And I don't want to move a thing  
> It might change my memory
> 
> Oh I am what I am  
> I'll do what I want  
> But I can't hide  
> And I won't go, I won't sleep  
> I can't breathe  
> Until you're resting here with me  
> And I won't leave, and I can't hide  
> I cannot be until you're resting here with me
> 
> I don't want to call my friends  
> They might wake me from this dream  
> And I can't leave this bed,  
> Risk forgetting all that's been
> 
> Oh I am what I am  
> I'll do what I want  
> But I can't hide  
> And I won't go  
> I won't sleep  
> And I can't breathe  
> Until you're resting here with me
> 
> And I won't leave  
> And I can't hide  
> I cannot be until you're resting here  
> And I won't go  
> And I won't sleep  
> And I can't breathe  
> Until you're resting here with me


End file.
